i
* - /' iam.- • onnrui VOL. 7 NO. 12 SEPTEMBER 1985
EDITOR IN CHIEF & DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONE PRESIDENT: KATHY KEETON
EDITOR: GURNEY WILLIAMS III GRAPHICS DIRECTOR. FRANK DEVINO MANAGING EDITOR: PAUL HILTS ART DIRECTOR: AMY SEISSLER
CONTENTS PAGE
FIRST WORD Opinion Candace Pert 6
OMNIBUS Contributors 8
COMMUNICATIONS Correspondence 12
FORUM Dialogue 14
EARTH Environment Bill Lawren 16
SPACE Comment Ben Bova 18
LIFE Biomedicine Kathleen McAuliffe 20
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Computers Bill Lawren 22
STARS Astronomy Edward Regis. Jr. 25 CONTINUUM Data Bank 27
FUTURE SHOCK ROLLS Article Daniel Burstein 36 OVER CHINA
WATER WITCHES Article Richard Wolkomir 40
THE ARK Fiction Bruce McAllister 44
SKYSHRINE Pictorial Owen Davies 52
ROBERT JASTROW nterview Anthony Liversidge 60
MOZART IN MIRRORSHADES Fiction Bruce Sterling and 68 Lewis Shiner
CAREERS OF THE FUTURE Article Richard Wolkomir 74
ANTIMATTER UFOs, etc. 83
MAN-OF-WAR Phenomena Henry Genthe 108
GAMES Diversions Scot Morris 112
LAST WORD Humor Mitch Coleman 114
(ISSN 0K-G-87H i: in Yugoslavian-born surrealist OMNI ; puo^shed monthly the United States and Canada by Omni Publications Inte-nahonal Ltd.. 1965 Broadway, New York. N.Y. 10023-5965. Second -das? oosraoe paid ai New York, N.Y., and al additional mail.ng trices. POSTMASTER: Send Ralle painted this address changes to Omni Magazine, Post 0"n;e Box 3039. Hat an, iowa 61537 Volume 7, Number 12. Copyright c 1935 £=\
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religious age they lived in. the sole proper, y or Orrin Publications iniornaticnal Ltd. Letters sen! to Omni or its editor.1; become :ne prope'ty of the magazine. 4 OMNI ' 1 -
grant money is generally impossible to
brilliant, internationally recognized ' neuro- inn 1 be scientisf, surrounded by the boxes o! :, women, for example), equipment that had once been tier lab She was crying by the curb. She had come
up for tenure at a prestigious inslilution, the media generally prefer to wallow in
Been voted down by i (all feminist self-congratulations, emphasizing male) she hadn't bothered to lobby and si. hi, dress-for-success befriend, and had been given three months pinstripe maternity suits thai won't raise an eyebrow in a banker's boardroom." The wash answer to why women don't get tenure research fellow she had personally recruited has not been forthcoming, perhaps because and trained the truth Lamely, she iuld An unmarried, female ex-dean who lest a have done wrong. Women, under these bitter tenure struggle to an unproductive, :. : 1 1 SJtBvi: urre.ve.-'JJAgnSiSrfwj ak ho in Men who , Tl e ik i terms of hoe they are to have 1 od to need their jobs more than single, -nulling ,, ilure to stack independent women do," On the other the deck in her favor. She had not recom- hand, as the women's caucus of the Society
mended thf I outside of American Physicists concluded, women her department, personal friends who would scientists who also double as mothers' surely have : given her rave assessments. are often thought to spend too much time l iical she had assumed with their children, thus diminishing the T that her superb science should have been chances for tenure. ample evidence. Maybe she hadn't Women are seeking cultural explanations
tor anfifemale discrimination. What if, horror
UUO!=?D . .» of horrors ,e But somehow her ousting had a more they are, biologically wcrnere VVtotrien.ky'ykl By Candace Pert biological flavor— like a pack of wild dogs whose pheromc II- destroying a weaker member perceived ness, and cufeness have aided them In iThe scientist's as a threat to the "male" group. : 1 ! n: '' - ?WiHffi«lS&v«&^"'k ' '"ewlvi ousting had a biological The struggle for tenure may seem to be 'ike eddbilloct at 'si the '!: spoiied-brat concern of a rarefied 1 AlrtSSAgl^f-,: '.|i,i...,| 'niWyP| "iavor—iike a elite who, unlike other hard-working Ameri- in drab dresses and sensible shoes, pack of wild dogs cans, can get the ultimate in job security, males can sense thai ihey are dealing with, a position for life In fact, in a demanding, literally destroying "the weaker sex"—the sex that , creative profession like science, the award- • lighi back, thai doesn't evoke a weaker fear member^ ing of tenure provides an opportunity for thr have now, women suffer the most: Profes-
line i controversial, of research until it begins sional women r ,i ing to bear fruit. with men in groups since they are In any case, the subject at hand is not surrounded by them at every revel of their the pros and cons of the tenure ,' structure V^t^r^^r^KiygeJe^ai;. I y ,,:|ii m
but why women scientists are slighted by of the male brain, must struggle with trie i- - .rt-r , ay Foi in f985, as the going gets lough and grant women evoke. funds-diminish for both men and women, Today a! a major cancer meeting. I saw despite extraordinary ' '."» breakthroughs, "ki a i plenary lecture delivered by the meek—usually women— are forced to the.only woman on the program. A small get going. woman •, ,ud As a result of such inequalities, virtually authority. Afterward, the typical throng every professional scientific society now' ot interested audisiice members surrounded
her. She smiled a 'ot. She supported her formed amidst great hope— not Utile and a fel* 'i&cwViSffl&^&^-^Xwty trepidation about male backlash. 1, myself, rercnt nn' , in short ', n the founding of one, WIN . k she was nothing to fear. 'i , ,'nfi; In typical style, we spent our first yem Slung his arm around her shoulders.
-. "11 as a problem UjUkjSjFi . u I 't?t e that women , 3 s than men at every career level is Ctmdnon Ron is ctti&ioi the Section on Brain Biochemistry a! the NaiiOtm! Institute oi Mental Heniih, in fkititetidit. Marylotid} whom she moils ur ror which ret . ,; , irce in 197 — T Dnnrui 1 he Chinese have a strange American companies, including IBM, are Witches," on page 40, Woikomir describes malediction: "I curse you; may you betting on this adaptability. U.S. firms how the dowser typically holds a forked be born in an interesting age." are gearing up for huge ventures in China. stick in his hands and crosses a field. For the citizens of the People's Republic, The year 2000 is a symbol, really—a goal When the tip of the rod points to the ground, that age is now. With surprising ease and to strive for." it indicates the place of hidden treasure alacrity, China has made enormous strides While China dwells on practical, earth- a water vein, a lost ring, or a bit of ore. to bridge the scientific and technological bound technology— using computers, While neither the scientific community nor gap created by Mao's Cultural Revolution. for instance, to assign water buffalo on the private sector officially endorses The nation, still considered a technological Wednesdays— others are engaged in a dowsing, Woikomir discovered some fasci- pip-squeak, is rushing toward the year heated debate over the military use of nating facts: U.S. Marines dowsed for 2000 with a ferocious purposefulness space. In this month's Interview, on page Vietcong tunnels and mines in 'Nam. A that is unmatched by any other country 60, Anthony Liversidge talks with physicist Pacific Bell employee dowses for hidden in the world. Robert Jastrow, outspoken defender of phone lines. And increasing numbers While visiting the Far East for the story the star-wars faith. Jastrow assures us that of urban professionals, using an assortment "Future Shock Rolls Over China" (page 36), defensive weapons in space will move of gadgets, dowse 'over maps, sets of freelance writer Daniel Burstein found us away from Mutual Assured Destruction questions, stock-market reports, parking biotechnologists developing synthetic insulin into Mutual Assured Survival, a happier spots—they even dowse for the best sushi and synthetic molecules of transfer RNA. realm. He outlines the stages of star-wars bar in town. Despite their alleged The research community was building technology, from the smart-bullet system successes, Woikomir has his doubts. "The sophisticated supercomputers and even through laser beams, electromagnetic rail surest way to find water," he says, "is to investing in telecommunications. And guns, and the notorious X-ray laser, the turn on the tap." yet, there is the curse of painful contrast: details of which are still a closely guarded In this month's fiction, writers Bruce China is still a bicycle society, where many secret. Scientists lately have joined battle Sterling and Lewis Shiner describe another lack indoor plumbing or phone service. over the value of such devices, and several quest: for priceless art objects during a Burstein, who is currently working on a have launched salvos at Jastrow himself. trip to the past. In "Mozart in Mirrorshades" book about the influence of high technology But Liversidge argues: 'Jastrow is making a (page 68), members of a time-travel on developing countries, says, "We fail to worthwhile contribution to an important project visit eighteenth-century Vienna, understand these recent developments debate, forcing star-wars opponents to deal where they meet up with young Wolfgang because we have forgotten that the years with his rebuttals. I found to my great Amadeus Mozart, rewriting history in the under Mao are only one segment of Chinese surprise that his opponents, in public debate process. Sterling has just published Schis- history The eighteenth and nineteenth and in congressional testimony, are not matrix (Arbor House), and Shiner's recent centuries were periods of great commericai adequately refuting his claims and are often book, Frontera, is a Baen Books release. expansion, generating a determined repeating their original positions rather In our second story, "The Ark" (page 44), national will unknown to us in the West. In than coming up with good answers." Bruce McAllister describes a global their long historical march, the Chinese On the lighter side, freelance writer ecological disaster. A collection of have resources to draw on. They are an Richard Woikomir examines the strange McAllister's short stories, The Faces Outside, adaptable people. And it appears that many phenomenon of dowsing. In "Water will be published by Borgo Press. DO 8 OMNI i ' BOB GUCCIONE editor & publisher ' KATHYKEETON ' , LETTE , ' ! '.. .<"" president ... v .-A' ',. , , ©MM PUBLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL LTD. THE CORPORATION Bob Gucdone {chairman of the board} Kaihy Keeton [president) CDnnnnuruicATORJs David J. Myerson (chief operating officer) Anihcnv J. Guccioce isooroia-y-ireasurer) EDITORIAL Editor in Chief: Bob Gi.iCC.one: titlitor Gumsy Wil- liams Mi: Managing Editor Paul Hilis; Senior Editors: Patrice Acierort, Douglas Coiiigan. Pamela Wein- traub; A/cfe}n FrWfor: Ere-; Dailc*: / /i.v-;or ErAtor: Ski Lee; S&tf vWvter; Kathleen Stein; rerjArres £oV7or: Robert Weil; Assoe/Ate Editor Jane BosveldrAss/sA «:;/ :;;,/;;.,:->. Murray Cox. Brian McKernan; Adminis- Gell-Mann Responds Turkish Wrath trative tailor 8ev Nsrenberg: Lite-fa.-y Rights Man- I enjoyed working with writer Ron Schultz, Erwin Chargaff states in his interview [June ager: Baosite C. I eirak; As-'Astera ^a.na^'.no Ed/io,"; for ,Sieyen C. i-ox; Copy Editors: prima riirsch, Sect? Bai- who interviewed me Omni [Interview, May 1985] that "Americans are shortchanged dinger; Editorial Assistants: Kevin l. fvlcKinney, 1985], and the remarks that were directly on their education" and that "half-civilized Micheie Eaton; Game:.; EoAoc Scot Morns; tc*ior. attributed to me were reported with people like the Turks have an almost holy Sgc^ Dr/isior- >::.: accuracy. I j& *- C, U But have a few comments on regard for teachers." This is a racist gener- iributinfj Fdiiors: Owen- Dnvi%s, Judith Heooer, Kath- the introduction to the interview, in which I alization unworthy of a scientist, who leen .McAij|iffe Dr. Pasrick : Moore: Rooert Sneckley was not quoted directly. should be objective and unprejudiced. DavaSbbei; Co/isu'toa EoAcr Dick Taesi. 0:;lcee: First, I 1965 Bro.a( although was concerned 20 years Having great regard for the long history ^86-ei00. Tele;; No. 237:28 ago with ideas that led to today's super- of Turkish civilization, I think it was Chargaff's ART string theories and have encouraged own education that was shortchanged. i-Gm-nics pi/.: Pram DeVtno; Arf 2Ar.. Amy research Assi. A.'AC.-c- Janel-rey; De^ocec Dv.-ayne on superstrings, they are not my F D. Senesen : " -:• .;.;:!;' :; ;:':' .f:-';/rv Hlidegard Kron: As- work. Superstring theories have been Atlanta hoiographers developed mostly by John Schwarz, my Tony Quceione; Aiiscc Staff Pho-h-jgraoher. n Lewis colleague at Caltech, in collaboration with Cartoon Confusion Norman; Ar; Asa/ -'atncla S Ostro^sH; Spec/a/ As- a number of other physicists, including As a regular reader of your excellent publi- s/sfa/W ?o Bod Gucco/ie.- Jane Homtish Michael Green, at of the University London. cation, I was surprised by the cartoon : ADMIMSTRA110M Second, '/P: David J..Myei"5on:6V. VfNAdministra- most MacArthur Foundation depicting a convention of schizophrenics es; Jen Winatorr'SV, V.P.iProduciiOn Dirsc- grant expenditures have gone to areas other wearing multiple name tags [June 1985, .Evans; V.PJf-inanr^: John Prebicn; CAv;- than the fellowship program. These include page 94]. This cartoon perpetuates a long- Tick Gavin; S;/s. Mo.-.: Cai.Je Charleston; research in health Promotion, and Planning: Marcia Qro- mental and parasitic standing misconception. : ssi. Region. Sales: Chuck Ancie-jsen. Dir. diseases, policy studies on world environ- Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that iron. ment and resources, projects in education causes a break with reality. Symptoms m Mgr. Lori Rom.: Dir of Ore Intl. Safes- and conservation, studies of io; V.P/Dir. of Public Relations: Marcia Po- law and include delusions, hallucinations, or grossly :iiy Mar. Ciaudia DovAnq; Dir. of Safes governance, and other worthwhile causes. disorganized behavior. The condition the cfrhsyr Beverly Gre.: oer. Prod Mgr.: Tbffi : Third, I'm not sure what Omni means cartoon refers to is multiple personality, A.'A. Prod Mgr. Joyce Pause Da: of Mktg superparticles, Eileen Kos'iov:i:_Subscript;ons: Marcia by which are supposed to which is characterized by the existence iary Pa; Hester; Traffic Mgr: William Msr- have been the unique constituents of the within an individual of two or more distinct c. Atr-fa Spec;s' /ss-i/ss.- Don Myrus; Foa- early universe. And lastly, I'm a theoretical personalities, each of which is dominant ins fVfgr,; Suzanne Locate!!! DA ofPubii-' physicist, not an cation:-:, U.K.: Dav:d Jones experimental physicist. at a particular time. '. ; ' ./A . Murray Gell-Mann R. David Couch rector of Adverting: Howard Plissner, Sr. Pasadena, CA Austin, TX Dir. New Bus. Development: Beverley War- AqV. Dir.: Linda- Newman; NY. Mgr/ Northeast Adv. Mgr: Roger McCcrd; Editors' reply: Our thanks to Murray Gell- Pseudosuccess 'est ant Mann for giving credit where it's due. Pamela Weintraub's description of "The ^Western Adv. Dir: Wenoy Bloxham: L.A. What he said about early-universe Impostor "is Drew; Adv. Prod. 01;.. Ton! Wagner; Adv.. Phenomenon" [Continuum, June Charlene Smith; Dir. AoV elementary particles was that each was 1985]—the feeling that one's accomplish- -es: Nevs York, 196C oryodxay. New York. accompanied "at a somewhat higher ments are earned fraudulently—was quite 5935, ion £12) 496-6100, telex No. : energy by one of another class. . . . interesting. I ;e!012, But disagree with the cause "I. 60601, Tei. (3121 56;j-C466: Northeast Evidence for these superpartners of known cited: anxiety over being more successful la, 1200 Post Road Edai. Wasrporr-, Ct, particles" is currently being sought. than one's father. In our society people ?203i 22G-3090: iV„'(.Jo V-u/ H St.. Nf.W., D.C. S0006, Toi fSO^f 298-6050: IVasr are encouraged to surpass their parents. Fish Story i Ange- Perhaps a better explanation is that )24, Tsl iP13; 824-9031: U.K. & Europe: Thomas Kovachevich's method for making the impostor phenomenon is an ego defense Club? Ltd.. ! Whrishafsfj S:., London W1. : paper "come alive" " [Games, May 1985] for !prjrr. Sancho Media Service, President: someone who has displayed superior is similar to 'e.3A Kanda IacheS-chome, Chivoda- the way dried bonito (fish) skills or talents in a society of equals. If ^o 101. Tel. 03-232-272', Te'ex J25472 shavings wriggle about after having been all people are created equal, and if I have FOREJGWJiCrriONS'' sprinkled onto hot rice. Not only is this .j- a accomplished some feat that others are : 5. John Evans, Japan: Obun- 5 tasty snack when soy sauce is 'Ud:,'5t3.Yokodera-Cbo. ShinpuKu-Ku added, but unable to match, then I must have _ cheated. , iionOmni. WalterGrerti- you can say that you've eaten fish while How comforting it is, then, to know {if 'tmsQ AG, Poslfach, CH-8021, Zurich, it was "still moving!" only secretly) that I'm fraud. Swiizsriand a Nita Collver Dennis Anthony Port Jefferson, NY Los AngelesDO FDRunn artist, Omni welcomes speculation, theories, as the thereby preserving the peaceful As a concerned environmentalist, I was commentary, dissent, and questions from coexistence of traditional and modern disturbed by Doug Garr's article "Pro-Tech readers in this open forum. We invite you values so important to the Japanese. Psychology" [Mind, June 1985], in which to use this column to voice your hopes I thoroughly enjoyed reading this most it was stated that harmony is the best about the future and to contribute to the interesting and informative issue. description of the Japanese attitude toward kind of informal dialogue that provokes Koichi Haraguchi the world. thought and generates breakthroughs. Counselor for Public Affairs Despite the zero quota established by Please note that we cannot return submis- Embassy of Japan the International Whaling Commission, sions and that the opinions expressed here Washington, DC Japan remains in violation by continuing to are not necessarily those of the magazine. hunt sperm whales, an endangered Phoebe Hoban's article about Japan's species. The Japanese use exploding The Twenty-First-Century Nation quest to develop computers that simulate harpoons to kill these magnificent animals, I thoroughly enjoyed Omni's special edition, human thought ['The Brain Race," June which are prized for their oil, an excellent Japan 2000 [June 1985] 1985], makes me wonder if we are losing our industrial lubricant that is alsfTused in When I was a child, the words made in ability to produce geniuses. nuclear warheads. The slaughter goes on Japan signified something that was cheap: Hoban parrots the old, familiar tune that despite man-made substitutes for the oil. flimsy transistor radios and trinkets made science will free us from the "drudgery In addition, the Japanese round up of recycled tin cans. It's amazing how of logical, deductive thought." Most people porpoises, brutally killing them with quickly and completely this notion has been have never been taught to think logically successive stabs in the back. The carcasses turned around. or deductively. Will a person truly become are then fed into a huge mincing machine, Today made in the USA and made the freer to "indulge in humanity" simply are mashed to a pulp, dried, and sold American way have been turned into because a part of his former work is being as fertilizer. Does this behavior suggest a nostalgic advertising slogans while the done by a machine? Perhaps he will culture "at one" with its environment? Japanese have fill become the acknowledged instead up his time with new forms of I fear that the Japanese are no more masters of duplicating and refining the drudgery. We shouldn't continue to delude concerned about man's harmony with inventions of other nations. Despite this, ourselves; to be human requires work— nature—and future implications for life on there are people who find comfort in looking with other humans. our planet—than we Americans are. down on Japan's "beehive" society and Joseph Moten Marina Kuran its presumed lack of inventiveness. Seattle Steilacoorn, WA In Democracy in America (1830), Alexis de Tocqueville an observation made about Hisako Matsubara claims that the Japanese I read Omni's issue on Japan with great the United States that can now apply to are more open to new technology because interest and admiration. Being an American ". Japan: , . the inventions of Europe," of their history and beliefs [First Word, of Japanese descent and having visited he wrote, "are adopted with sagacity; they June 1985], What she doesn't mention, Japan several times, I have tremendous are perfected and adapted with admirable however, is that for most of Japan's history interest in Japanese culture. skill to the wants of the country. Manufac- the people lived under an oppressive Doug Garr's article reminded me of how turers exist, but the science of manufacture seignorial/warlord system. group oriented Japanese society is. I is not cultivated; and they have good Today, quasi-seignorial corporations caused a minor uproar at a Japanese fast- workmen but very few inventors." have replaced the warlord system, with food restaurant when I asked for onions Your issue showed that the manufacturing company presidents taking the place of the to be omitted from my burger. Nobody ever sciences are well cultivated in the beehive. warlords. Matsubara should also remem- asks for something different. Deviating It probably won't be long before the ber that Japanese labor unions were from the norm in Japan is about as common Japanese become known for their inven- crushed in the Fifties and now are just as defying the laws of gravity, yet that tiveness, too. Thank you for giving us a extensions of the corporations. society embraces new technologies with a of taste Japan's honey rather than its sting. I feel that there is more to Japanese gusto that Americans find amazing. Terry L. Wentz society than meets the eye. Although there How is it that a Japanese computer Monroe, Wl is much to praise the Japanese for, I don't scientist at the vanguard of his country's believe the picture is as rosy as Omni research into artificial intelligence would not My compliments to the staff of Omni for suggests. Unlike the Japanese, I'd rather even conceive of wearing a colored shirt your special edition, Japan 2000. keep a disdainful eye on technology and at the office? " 'Curiouser and curiouser,' Technology has ." become an integral part maintain my independence. said Alice. . . of our culture. But as you have noted, the Roger L. Lyons Scoft Kariya scientist is accorded the same respect Columbus, OH New YorkDCl 14 OMNI — LLER WEED EARTH By Bill Lawren 1 he deer sprang away, zigzagging From Hawaii, where a couple was sprayed by a shower of machine-gun fire." nimbly through a stand of fir trees murdered while hiking in a remote national All this war talk represents a recent and deep in Oregon's Rogue River forest, to California, where patrolling forest drastic change in the relationship between National Forest. The hunters—Jerry rangers have often been fired on, chance the nation's marijuana growers and the Wageman, of Klamath Falls, Oregon, and meetings between marijuana growers public at large. Ten to 15 years ago, rural two friends—followed purposefully behind, and hikers, hunters, or rangers have marijuana cultivation was a low-key and their boots crunching through the dense frequently ended in threats, abuse, and essentially peaceful enterprise carried on underbrush. Suddenly the air was split with outright violence. Although no one knows by what Cimolino calls "corncob smoking a deafening barrage of rifle fire. Two the exact number of such incidents, some old-timers and flower children from the scruffy backwoodsmen appeared, both of authorities maintain that marijuana- related .Sixties." As far as residents and authorities them armed to the teeth. One of the outlawry has made many of the country's were concerned, marijuana cultivation— . ambushers put a shotgun next to treasured national parks and pristine forests even on vast tracts of public land—was Wageman's head, threatening to kill him. "I increasingly unsafe for recreational use. often overlooked and even tolerated. heard a big bang!" Wageman said. "I In fact, members of a General Accounting But by the mid-Seventies this idyllic really thought I was dead." Office investigating team reported last ambience had begun to change. Attracted Wageman and his friends had made an year that at least six federally owned public by highly publicized success stories and inadvertent and potentially deadly error: wilderness areas had been closed or by soaring prices (with the coming of They had strayed too close to the isolated restricted because of "potential danger sinsemilla, a seedless marijuana that is "plantation" of a pair of reclusive marijuana from marijuana growers." exponentially more potent than the garden growers. —Although Wageman miraculously "You want to have a wilderness experi- variety, the cost of an ounce shot from survived "it was just a bad shot," he ence?" asks John Cimolino, a supervisor for $20 to as much as $200), a new class of said later, "but it was enough to make me California's Mendocino County. "You won't immigrant streamed in from the cities to take : bleed pretty good '— his harrowing have one here. You might get shot." up the trade. experience was just one part of a story that "There's no question that some catastro- Those newcomers who could afford it has been repeated again and again with phe is waiting in the wings," says California crowded the real-estate offices, buying alarming regularity on public lands State Senator Barry Keene. "Maybe some thousands of acres of formerly useless dotting much of the western United States. carload of innocent tourists is going to get backland. Those who couldn't, spilled out into some of the most isolated areas of the national forests. This new element, authorities say, included everyone from Hell's Angels to the hirelings of organized crime. Usually more hot tempered than their laid-back hippie contemporaries, these newcomers were roiled even further by crowding and by competition from "patch pirates"— pot thieves who themselves often raided plantations, assaulting and even killing the growers who lived there. (In 1981 Humboldt County, California, social worker Kathy Davis—who was not a commerical grower was murdered in her isolated country home by patch pirates.) Violence begat violence, as growers of all stripes took fresh pains to protect their investments, their livelihoods, and their lives. Nowhere was the situation worse than in the remote New River area of California's Shasta-Trinity National Forest. "Between 1978 and 1983," says U.S. Forest Service spokesman Royal Mannion, "we were getting literally dozens of reports California marijuana grower: In search of profit, he charges more for an ounce. a week of violent incidents in that area. 16 OMNI CONTINUED ON PAGE 106 — " HOESTRING SIGNAl By Ben Bova I ^% 1 eve created a revolution in between McMurdo and other Pole posts. for more than a few hours. "But the NSF's 1 communications here. sent i And He a proposal to the NSF and hoped field crew was ready," Comberiate says. mm mm we've done it with a tremendous that his project would receive funding. "We got the critical stuff indoors within an amount of volunteer work." It would cost nothing to use the existing hour and a half." When Mike Comberiate signed up for a satellites: He needed only enough money to The steerable antenna system had to be five-week-long stint at the South Pole, build the ground equipment and to able to withstand temperatures of -125°F he had little idea that he would one day purchase the special antenna parts. The gusting winds, and snowstorms. To keep help enhance communications between that University of Texas at Austin had an ongoing energy needs at a minimum, engineers outpost and the rest of the world. But interest in Antarctica and, intrigued by decided to heat only the movable parts of thanks to the ingenuity of this NASA engineer Comberiate's proposal, offered to donate the system. A dome over the' system serves and the help of the National Science $200,000. The NSF also put up $50,000. as a windbreak. Foundation (NSF), a unique satellite [ink Once the money came through, Comberiate On December 19, 1984, exactly one year an effort that could have taken several and his team at Goddard began rummag- from the date that Comberiate submitted years and up to $35 million—was estab- ing through NASA warehouses for surplus his six-page proposal to the NSF the system lished in just under a year, for the nominal materials from which to construct the was set in motion. It has been functioning cost of $250,000. tracking system. beautifully ever since. Comberiate, a thirty-seven-year-old "We refurbished some extra equipment, When they used ham radios, scientists spacecraft-systems engineer at NASA's integrated this with new equipment, and could send no more than 75 bits of data per Goddard Space Flight Center, had worked checked it all out end to end at Goddard. second, with one error every 100 bits. on a series of sateilites. scientific He'd Then we packed it up and reassembled Tne satellite system can transmit 10,000 also to all been but one of the seven conti- it at the Pole," Comberiate says. bits per second, with no errors, between the nents and it decided was time to see Part of the six tons of equipment would Pole and McMurdo. And the system isn't Antarctica. For his "vacation" he volunteered be dropped at McMurdo; the remainder, at dependent on weather. to make a trek to the end of the earth to the Pole. Unpacking it seemed a herculean "If you send a signal to the satellite," give some input on how to shelter scientific task. In addition its to weight, there was Comberiate explains, "it will send it back instruments from the harshest of elements. another problem— components might down, over the horizon, without the noisy While visiting the McMurdo station in freeze and break if exposed to the elements ionosphere causing any interference. Antarctica, Comberiate learned that scien- Essentially, anyone who can see the satellite tists there had recently begun using can pickup the signal." communications satellites to relay informa- Until the satellite hookup was established, tion to the United States. But some scien- the lack of good communications was tists at higher latitudes like the Pole relied on hampering some of the work being done ham radio-like equipment for their link by scientists at the Pole. "Before we had the with McMurdo. There were limits to the satellite link, for about nine months out of amount of data that could be transmitted. the year everything went in and out of And the link was tenuous, highly dependent the South Pole by telegraphic message," on tricky in conditions the polar ionosphere. says James T Peterson of the National Engineers considered had several ways of Oceanic and Atmosphere Association, in sending information, but most were just Boulder, Colorado. "There was a limit to the too costly or were impractical because of number of characters you could send. the Antarctic environment. Using microwave Occasionally information would be garbled. relay, for example, would mean building Now you can get it within a day. 36 relay stations across the Antarctic. SPACE/TIME "Then I got the idea of working with satellites already in polar orbit. I thought we September 1, Voyager II is 1,656,000,000 could use the satellites to transfer data miles from Earth and 114,000,900 miles from one computer station to another," from Uranus. Comberiate explains. September 26, Department of Defense Weather and Earth-observation satellites shuttle flight slated. Crew will include such as Nimbus 7 and Landsats 4 and 5 Commander Carl Bobko, Pilot Ronald swing over the Pole every day. Comberiate Grabe, and mission specialists Richard knew that they carried equ-ipment that Mullane, Robert Steward, and David could easily be used for communications The South Poie satellite data ii^k. Hilmers.DCI 18 OMNI DREAMS AND THE ANTEATER LIF By Kathleen McAuliffe hen a rou of neuroscientists mammals to evolve from the monotreme I ^^ I 9 P the brain involved in memory. During REM recently proclaimed j that line, I I II he observes, have a far smaller sleep, his electrodes detected a slow %^ ImP dreams were meaningless and prefrontal cortex than their predecessors brain wave called theta rhythm. Further best forgotten, they could scarcely have do. Coinciding with the drastic shrinkage of investigations revealed that theta rhythm that guessed the spiny anteater— not this part of their brain, however, is the occurs in the hippocampus only at one Freud would prove to their — be most formi- sudden emergence of REM sleep. Could other time: when the animal is awake and adversary. dable dreaming, he wondered, have taken over the engaged in species-specific activities. To be sure, Freud's disciples can point to functions that the prefrontal large cortex During REM sleep, then, it seems possible myriad cases of patients who have gained performs for the echidna? that animals are reprocessing memories powerful insights through an examination of Winson turned to the classic experiments of the day's most significant experiences. the latent meaning of their dreams. But of French dream researcher Michel Jouvet But if that is true, how does the echidna such anecdotal evidence does not always for clues. In the Sixties Jouvet identified manage to get along without dreaming? hold in scientific up court. That's why the a tiny cluster of cells in the lower brain stem Winson once again turned his attention biological testimony of the unlikely anteater that inhibits movement during dreaming. to the echidna's oversize prefrontal cortex. A has stirred considerable interest among By destroying this center in cats, Jouvet person whose prefrontal cortex has been psychologists and neuroscientists. freed the animals to act out their dreams. damaged shows impulsive behavior. Such The importance of the spiny anteater, The results were fascinating; At the onset of patients rarely plan ahead or consider also known as the echidna, lies in its pivotal sleep, REM the cats reared up and hissed, the repercussions of a particular action. "It position in the evolution of dreaming, striking the air with their claws. At other is in the prefrontal cortex," Winson says, explains neuroscientist Jonathan Winson in times, the animals stalked imaginary prey. "that memories of events appear to get his recent book, Brain and Psyche. One In short, Jouvet's subjects engaged in formulated into complex strategies that of two monotremes— or egg-laying behaviors during sleep that are most guide our conduct." mammals— in existence today, the echidna important for their survival while awake. The echidna, Winson theorized, was is a very good sleeper. But unlike man, Winson pondered the meaning of this using its large prefrontal cortex to integrate mouse, and all other mammals, the echidna nocturnal replaying of the day's events. experiences into memory in its waking does not produce REM {rapid eye Using rats, he began to chart the electrical state—as the events actually unfold in real movement) a sign of dreaming. — activity of the hippocampus, a section of time. "With a simple animal like the It is tempting to view this oddity as echidna, this approach appears to have evidence of the echidna's close affiliation to worked well enough," says Winson. "But in reptiles, an entire class of animals that order for mammals with more sophisticated never experiences REM. Yet the echidna, behavioral repertoires to evolve, nature which emerged 180 million years ago, had to hit upon a new solution for integrating has a distinctly mammalian brain. In one experience, over time, that required much important respect its brain is more like that less prefrontal cortex." The solution, he of Homo sapiens than any other species: is convinced, lies in REM sleep. The echidna's prefrontal cortex is massive in "If humans had continued to evolve .relation to the rest of its brain. along the same lines as the echidna," argues This anatomical fact is often overlooked Winson, "we would have to carry our by those who regard the well-developed prefrontal cortex around in a wheelbarrow. human prefrontal cortex as a unique mark [Intelligent] man sjmply would not have of intellectual ability. Lying just behind evolved. We can accomplish remarkable the forehead, this part of the brain gives cognition and subtlety of planning with humans our lofty brow ridge. It distinguishes comparatively little cortex because we leave us from chimps and apes, whose slanted higher-level processing for nighttime, foreheads we equate with inferior minds. when our brains are not being overtaxed So what is this lowly mammal—only one step by incoming sensory data." removed from reptiles doing with a — To Winson, then, dreams are far from prefrontal cortex swollen out of proportion? meaningless, as some neuroscientists According to Winson, an associate contend. To be sure, their bizarre images professor of neuroscience at Rockefeller and twists of plot are hard to fathom. But no University, the answer is one of the keys to matter how fantastic, Winson would agree understanding the meaning of dreams. with Freud that within these internal dramas The first placental and marsupial (pouched) We the are dreamers of dreams, but why? lie our most basic selves. DO 20 OMNI — EC I PES F T ART FOAL IfUTE By Bill Lawren ^^\t first glance the experiment looked demand production will enable factories to Reid was immersed. The first edition of jM*** like an exercise in sheer play, reproduce parts from the past— everything FABLE was completed in 1983, and an # m the sort of thing that scientists from a turbine blade for a B-52 bomber to improved version will be issued this year, indulge in during those awkward moments a door hinge from a 1952 Studebaker— At that point Reid should be ready to embark between grants. Using a computer, even when the machinery that originally on the next and perhaps most difficult Stanford electrical engineering professor produced that part has long since been step: to write computerized instructions for Brian Reid tried to teach a simulated robot consigned to the scrap heap. the manufacturing of a real-life part— in how to cook Julia Child's beef Wellington. The scientist and the concept began to this case an integrated circuit. Here, the After 13 hours— and 60 pages of computer come together shortly after Reid joined biggest problem is to ensure that the instructions "you can't tell a robot to the Stanford faculty in 1980. A look at instructions are truly "portable," that they spread seasoning evenly," Reid says, "you Stanford's on-campus integrated-circuit can be used to manufacture the same part have to specify the number of grams of factory convinced Reid of the need for a at different factories. seasoning per square centimeter"—Reid computer language that could accurately The next step will involve making gave up, vanquished by trying to teach the specify the steps involved in a manufactur- computer simulations of real factories- robot chef how to wrap the finished beef ing process. When he applied to the much as Reid simulated a robot for his beef in a pastry shell. Department of Defense's Advanced Wellington test—so that the viability of the Frivolity? Gratuitous programming? A Research Project Agency for a grant to manufacturing instructions can be tested. waste of time? The experiment was none of develop this language (called FABLE), he These simulations, which will be based the above. Actually, Reid's culinary met with an unexpectedly enthusiastic on factory designs provided by private computerizing was one of the first stages of response. "The military had a long-standing corporations, will duplicate in the computer labor on a grand concept known as interest in demand production of parts," each assembling machine in a given real- demand production of parts—a long-term he explains, "and they saw the development life factory. project that, when completed, will lead of FABLE as a vital first step. Actually," he "If the process calls for turning oh an to fully automated in factories which robot admits, "it was the first that I had heard oven," Reid says, "the instruction will go to 1 assemblers work under instructions from of demand production/ an oven simulation instead of a real oven. central computers. Equally important, But within a few months of this introduction, The simulation then tells us what the oven would have done after receiving the instruction, which in turn tells us whether the instruction would have made a real oven do what we wanted." Reid estimates that simulated factories should be ready for this sort of testing in about two years. The next step, Reid says, will be to feed the tested instructions to real machines in real factories, beginning with Stanford's integrated-circuit plant. Of course, the nagging question remains: Given Reid's failure with the beef Welling- ton simulation, will the real system work? The Defense Department is convinced that it can, and so is interested bystander George Heilmeier, a research vice president for Texas Instruments. "I think it's not only possible," says Heilmeier, "but very very useful." Reid himself, though cognizant of the problems, is equally sanguine. "It's all a matter of time and money," he says. "You have to remember that the beef Wellington thing was one person— namely, me working halfheartedly for a short period of time. If I had had even as little as a month," Beef Wellington—and will B-52 parts— be produced by the same do-it-all machinery. Reid adds, "I would have finished it. "CXI 22 OMNI — DIGITAL ORRERY By Edward Regis, Jr. Uranus, Neptune, and will our solar system end? Will Technology, has come up with a way to Jupiter, Saturn, problem and to forecast Pluto— for 40,000 years into the future. It Howit wind down peacefully or solve a ten-body — general-purpose violently flinging its bodies off to the behavior of our planetary system. took a VAX (an expensive run this the nether reaches or drawing them together With the help of colleagues at the California computer) about one hour to achieved the into a crashing finale of planets, moons, Institute of Technology, Sussman designed problem; the digital orrery and asteroids? and built a computer whose very structure same results in 100 seconds. the final The long-term stability of the solar system mimics that of the solar system. He calls The orrery may be able to tell us fate of solar system, but before it is is one of the classic problems of astrophys- it the digital orrery (named after the seven- the it will ics. In the jargon of those trying to solve teenth-century mechanical solar-system asked to crunch the ultimate number orreries). be put to work on lesser riddles, like the it, it is a "many-body" problem, one in models called which the orbits of several bodies simulta- Working with off-the-shelf Toshiba memory case of the missing asteroids. neously disturb one another's gravitational chips, Fairchild logic circuits, and "The asteroid belt between Mars and bodies fields. Each planet is jostled by the sun advanced adder and multiplier components Jupiter contains several thousand and eight other planets of various sizes, and donated by Hewlett-Packard, Sussman the size of mountains," says Sussman, "but There are all exert their influence from constantly and his colleagues built a machine made they aren't spread out evenly. changing distances. As those who have of ten separate processor boards, essentially lots of gaps—so-called Kirkwood gaps- tried to crack the problem have discovered, small computers, one for each solar- empty spaces where there are absolutely the mathematics of predicting the solar system body. The inventors then linked zero asteroids. Why?" system's judgment day are daunting. these ten "planet computers" with parallel Jack Wisdom, an astronomer at MIT, has "A two-body problem can be solved circuits so each of the simulated planets theorized that one of the gaps is produced completely," says Cornell University astron- would "feel" the gravitational pull of its by the gravitational influence of Jupiter, omer Peter Gierasch. "Some inroads can neighbor simultaneously. but Sussman wants to use the orrery to figure be made into a three-body problem. But a This one-of-a-kind, special-purpose out what's causing the rest of them. nine-body problem? Just about hopeless." architecture gives the computer the ability The whole solar system is subject to the Now Gerald Jay Sussman, professor to handle data at a blistering speed. On same types of gravitational disturbances of electrical engineering and computer a trial run, the digital orrery emulated that produced the Kirkwood gaps among science at the Massachusetts Institute of the motions of the five outer planets the asteroids. This means that interactions among the planets may give rise to unsta- ble regions between them. After another shakedown, the orrery produced data that suggested it would be impossible for a body to maintain a stable orbit between Jupiter and Saturn. "What we mainly hope to find out," says Sussman, "is how the planets got where they are, whether the solar system could have turned out otherwise. Right now, no one knows." So far, the digital orrery's longest look into the future has been an extended projection of Pluto's orbit. Usually the outer- most planet, Pluto curves inside Neptune's orbit for 21 of the 248 years it takes to travel around the sun. Because their paths are not in the same plane, there's little danger of the two planets colliding. But, astronomers have wondered how long this friendly arrangement can continue. "In our four-and-a-half-million-year simulation, Pluto did exactly what we expected it to," says Sussman. "It behaved stably, did nothing unreasonable. Now we're planning Solar-system circuits and planets on microchips: The digital orrery is the new crystal ball. for a hundred million years. "DO cafUTiruuunn par- began my search for the ultimate connection between matter tum world, electrons suffer a paradoxical life. Because of their and consciousness nearly two decades ago, when the Age of ticle behavior and their electrical repulsion, no two electrons can space. They are doomed to solitude. Aquarius was in full bloom and I was a professor of physics at ever occupy the same seeking I San Diego State University. There were drugs to be taken, life- In their wavelike guise, however, electrons are forever style changes to be made, a war to protest, and liberated sex to their opposite particle, the positron, even though such a meeting disillusioned. would result in their destruction. The electron's electrical charge is be enjoyed. I embraced it all. By 1970 1 had become Eastern cry for the return to the void. It hopes and fears to attract its I turned on, dropped out, and found myself involved with a mystics, consciousness-raising groups, and others who were la- opposite, its antimatter partner, the positron, in a dance of death. beled New Age. During my year in France, as associate professor Similarly, love and feelings of compassion may be created by particle-wave units of light. As waves, photons tend to of physics at the University of Paris, I met and studied with the photons, end. Lasers work be- biblical scholar and cabalist teacher Carlo Suares. I was also vis- march together, working toward a common iting professor at Birkbeck College, in London, studying with phys- cause photon waves are "in love with each other." icist David Bohm, who had similar interests. Love and hate, success and failure, violence and peace could of of forces and atomic objects flow- My mind reached out for understanding, and by 1974 I felt that be but manifestations energy, particles and waves. quantum physics and consciousness were deeply connected, I ing through our bodies, brains, and minds as began to realize that the brain may be governed by the laws of What we call the brain is the particlelike behavior of our observa- quantum physics rather than the laws of biology or neurophysiol- tions. What we call the mind is the wavelike behavior of atomic ogy. As a result, such feelings as love and hate, commonly thought objects, invisible and unobserved. Mind is then an outgrowth of to be God-given or incapable of scientific understanding, could the basic laws of quantum physics together with the actions of the be translated into the language of quantum physics. observer, which I believe are the acts of consciousness. The only mystery of quantum physics lies in the wave-particle For example, one act of consciousness could cause a change duality described by Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize-winning in quantum surface waves acting along the thin membranes cov- physicist. Atomic objects (electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, ering our neurons. These waves are associated with the move- quarks, and so on) sometimes behave like particles, and other ments of the protein-gate molecules embedded in the neurons' times, like waves. When does an atomic object behave like awave walls. A "particle" observation would momentarily "freeze" the mol- thought. and when does it behave like a particle? According to many quan- ecules' positions, resulting in the appearance of Another tum physicists the answer depends on whether the object is ob- complementary "wave" observation where the proteins remained served. Unobserved, the atomic object appears as a wave spread unobserved would produce changes in the energy of these waves, out over space, but the instant it is observed the wave collapses resulting in the arousal of feelings. Thus feelings and thoughts to a point and behaves like a particle. The action of a simple ob- would show the same type of duality as waves and particles. servation "causes" a wave to collapse, producing a particle. But Understanding how the brain/mind works may lie within the whole what kind of action is a simple observation? Nobel laureates Eu- range and arsenal of the mathematical language of quantum gene Wigner and Brian Josephson and many other physicists, physics. The probability equations and the behavior of atomic ob- conscious- including myself, believe that it may be a fundamental event be- jects may depend on the wave-into-particle actions of all its participants yond physics. We view it as the action of consciousness. ness. Without such actions the world and of holds would remain wispy, ghostlike quantum waves, and there would I argue that the wave-particle duality of quantum physics true in the human brain, orchestrating the behavior of individual be nothing material at all.—FRED ALAN WOLF nerve cells as they relay their chemical messages to one another. The wave-particle duality action of electrons, for example, could Fred Alan Wolt is the author of Star Wave: Mind, Consciousness, and give rise to feelings of loneliness, of ego and hatred. In the quan- Quantum Physics (Macmillan Publishing Company). " " coruTiruuunn his musical analogy. "If you in Bedford, Massachusetts, automatically jump past you think about what happens offers a central computerized in the job listings. The inter- j when you pluck a guitar database designed to match ! ested employer contacts string," he says, "you don't high-tech professionals JobNet, which in turn notifies really hear the strings vibrat- with client companies through the applicant. j ing. What you actually hear electronic want ads. Jobs are typically high are sound waves that propa- A job seeker with a per- tech—chemical engineers, gate through the air to your sonal computer scientists, and modem j computer hard- ear. It's more or less the signs on with the service, ware/software specialists, in same this boundary area enters a resume into the data i systems analysts, data known as the inner helios- bank, and punches in a processors—with clients that pheric shock. The electron password to scan a detailed | include Lockheed, Pacific plasma oscillations are the listing of job openings. If a Bell, and Bank of Boston. vibrating strings, and the given ad sounds promising, "The rationale for develop- j radio waves we detect are the registrant can call up ing this service is that the the sound waves." some background information opportunities now available Do stellar winds oscillate The investigators are still on the firm in question, fill in the high-technology field far like guitar strings? trying to determine why out an application form online, outnumber the qualified the signal seemed to appear, and send the company a people," says JobNet presi- SPACE GUITAR then disappear. "It may be," verbatim resume. dent Joe Stacey. "This sys- surmises Kurth, "that it's At the same time, a firm in tem gives companies instant In 1983 and 1984, the always there below the the market for fresh talent access to a steady number Voyager spacecraft missions threshold of what our instru- can hook into the service, of top-notch professionals." In detected a mysterious radio ments can detect and that browse leisurely through all . the near future, Stacey fore- signal emanating from an the Voyagers simply caught it the resumes, then select and sees computer job hunting for unknown source in space. during its peaks." print those that seem to such health-care and finan- Now, after months of analysis, — Bill Lawren meet the job specifications. cial-service professionals a trio of space-plasma physi- Resumes show up without as X-ray and CAT-scan cists has concluded that "Hope is generally a wrong names and addresses to technicians, stock analysts, the signal may derive from a guide, but it is very good guarantee confidentiality and commodities brokers, and phenomenon that they liken company along the way. are assigned code numbers arbitrageurs. to the music of the spheres. —Lord Halifax so your own boss would —Robert Brody About 4 billion miles from Earth, explains University "One of the earliest lessons of Iowa physicist William I learned as a child was Kurth—who analyzed the that if you looked away from signal in tandem with Iowa's something, it might not be Donald Gurnett and Freder- there when you looked ick Scarf of TRW, in Redondo back. Beach, California—the —John Edgar Wideman electrically charged gas plasma known as the solar ELECTRONIC WANT wind begins to run into similar ADS plasmas generated by other stars. The resulting shock Job hunters eager to skip wave reflects free electrons, all the pointless classified- which release waves of ad checking, phone calling, energy called electron application filling, and inter- plasma oscillations. These view hopping involved in oscillations in turn generate landing employment can now the radio signals detected simply tap into a computer. by the two Voyagers. A national, 24-hour-a-day Job hunters can give up pounding the pavement and go online. It is here that Kurth draws service called JobNet, based The latest employment service is a 24-hour-a-day silicon want ad. 28 OMNI express those hard-to-come- BABBLE 123 j by sentiments like "I suppose Little did Elizabeth Barrett you'd like to call your lawyer." | Browning know when she For those of a less subtle 123 can be penned her love sonnets to | nature, Saobte husband Robert that if she more specific: "This is the kiss were alive some hundred off, baby!" Those computers years in the future, she could really know how to get to have saved herself a lot of a girl. time and trouble. If she felt the But Babble 123 is more need to wax poetic these than a smooth-talking disk days, she could simply turn that can output sweet noth- On her personal computer ings. Containing more than and plug in Babble 123. 7,000 words in its vocabulary, Presto, random romance. it can produce everything r'aSiifcE&J Thanks to some would-be from immemorable office Fairfield Software, memos to Ph.D. dissertations The best skinny fast-food French fries are born in the desert Romeos at on variety of subjects soil of the Northwest. Now a competitor arises in the East. in Fairfield, Iowa, computers a now have an artificial heart to guaranteed to confound and POTATO WAR duce a russet potato that go along with their intelli- confuse. With such theses responds to the more easterly gence. And if these programs as "Einstein's wife was a relative model" and directives It may never rival such growing conditions. "They're aren't yet producing a dozen great internecine struggles trying," says Oregon State red roses and a cool bottle like "If you don't know what as Army versus Navy or University crop scientist of Dom Perignon, they are you're doing, at least be Schultz versus Weinberger, Al Mosley, "to breed us right delivering a sort of silver- neat," how can artificial doc- but to the combatants, the out of business." tongued savoir faire worthy torates with artificial secre- Great American Potato War is The competition has Mos- of any dime-store Don Juan. taries be far behind? serious business indeed. ley and the Northwest potato Not only can Babble 123 Marc Halberstadt, a Playing Helen of Troy is a re- farming community more produce such meaningful spokesman for Fairfield doubtable spud known as than mildly worried. Because verses as "My engine starts to Software, says that Babble the russet Burbank, the of shipping costs—up to rev when you blow in my 123 will be on the market for $19.95. It will common brown-skinned vari- five dollars a hundredweight beer," but it can also help you ] soon be ety used for baking and for from Idaho to New York- available for the Apple II, making those unbelievably Northwestern growers often Macintosh, IBM PC, Atari, and skinny French fries served up have to struggle just to Commodore 64 computers. at your local drive-through. break even. A homegrown The next time you're wonder- Up to now, the Pacific Eastern russet would ob- ing "How do I love thee?" Northwest has had something viously be much cheaper for let Babble 123 count the of a corner on the russet buyers in the urban East ways.—Leslie Epstein Burbank, which thrives in the and would deprive North- sandy desert soil of Wash- western growers of their "I am accustoming myself ington, Oregon, and espe- highest-volume markets. to the idea of regarding cially Idaho. In fact, the So far none of the Eastern every sexual act as a Northwest produces 75 per- breeding programs have process in which four cent of the russets grown borne substantial fruit. "But if persons are involved. We in the country. But breeders they do." says Mosley, "well shall have a lot to discuss back East are casting an have to sell our potatoes about that." increasingly covetous eye on in Korea."—Bill Lawren —Sigmund Freud the Burbank. Experts count at least a dozen breeding "Wham! There it was, the "We live in an age when programs currently brewing world, solid as a rock, dense unnecessary things are our in the East and Midwest, as a doorknob." Elizabeth Barrett Browning: only necessities." Wilde all of them designed to pro- —Walker Percy Replaced by $19.95 software. —Oscar CDruTiruuurm myoglobin. Acton's process price of lobster meat in workweek can range "from | j breaks open the fibers and markets and restaurants up zero the ain't j when lobsters I oxidizes the pigment. and down the Eastern sea- crawlin'," to 72 hours j when | Acton says three major board, where the customers, i they are, which is customarily food companies are testing understandably, want perfect between | June and Novem- the process, although for two-clawed ] lobsters, not ber, according to Blackmore. ] proprietary reasons he won't culls. In j recent months, Despite the new law, he reveai their names. They're i they've been selling for 40 to : concedes, the control of looking at three bleaches: 50 cents a less. I pound recreational iobstering is a j sodium bisulfite, hydrogen That's why Blackmore and problem that's likely to con- peroxide, and ascorbic acid. members of the Maine [ Lob- I tinue to be hard to deal with. Acton prefers ascorbic acid, ster Advisory Council are I Weekenders have always which is another name for so enthusiastic about a new been a problem in Maine, | vitamin C. "It does a beautiful i lobstering law that will go where they routinely drag the The white meat of the future job with color. And any resi- into effect in March 1987. ocean bottom in ] search of may be bleached dark meat. it due leaves would have only Among its other provisions, it | shellfish, chewing up and a beneficial effect." legislation ) the would mandate maiming lobsters with an WHITE MEAT —Douglas Starr runners on the traps so that abandon that astonishes | i when the lobsters are hauled lobstermen, whose livelihood Prefer white meat to dark 'Was, mankind has yet to I over the side of a boat their depends upon the well- meat in turkey or chicken? So invent a system of claws won't break off. Not being of these crustacean i do most Americans, which relationships more natural only that, but one-inch square creatures. I is why white meat is generally than money." openings in mesh traps will Culls, they say, end up in three times the price. —Vassily Akayonov replace one-and-a-half- salads, sandwiches, and Now there's a way to inch squares, and three-inch Newburgs. They're not the multiply profits by changing MAIMED will LOBSTERS j escape panels be man- ones you see paddling dark meat to light. James dated, to cut down on the around in the tanks of fancy Acton, professor of food One of the many talents of growing number of culls. restaurants.— George Nobbe science at Ciemson Univer- the Maine lobster is its ability From the Maine lobster- sity, in Ciemson, South to regenerate a lost claw man's point of view, the "Death sometimes changes Carolina, performs this al- when the necessity arises. regulations are long overdue people for the worse." chemy by peeling dark meat The trouble is that the proc- in an industry where the —Joseph Heller from the bones and cutting ess can take from two to it into finger-size strips; then three years, according to Ed he puts the strips in an Blackmore, a lobsterman agitator with water and a for 31 years and the current bleaching agent. Ten minutes president of the Maine Lob- and three water changes sterman's Association. later, leg meat is as light as According to Blackmore, a the most delicate breast. lobster will, in the Down "The taste is diluted," con- East vernacular, "shoot a cedes Acton, "but it be- claw" simply to get free of an comes more flavorful if you old-fashioned wire or wooden batter fry it. It and would trap. It can also lose a dan- be ideal to use in fried gling limb when traps are chicken nuggets or blended hauled over the side of the with white meat in deli- fishing boat. As Blackmore sliceable luncheon meat." puts it, "Crunch, crunch, Dark meat is dark because no more claws." it consists mainly of muscle. Such maimed Maine Locked inside each muscle's lobsters are called culls, and thousands of fibers is a through no fault of their Lobster claw protruding from standard trap. When the trap is reddish pigment called own, they are depressing the hauled over the side of a boat, "Crunch, crunch, no more claw." 30 OMN! — ered hopeless," says Mach- they were on the right track. emer, who described the Weeks later, the expedition case of one of his patients at hit pay dirt. Divers found Duke this way: "The retina the ruins of a square tower around the optic-nerve head linked to a partially intact in the eye was totally de- adjoining defense wall. Fur- tached and balled up like a ther exploration brought fist. In the operating room we to light remnants of an ancient were able to unfold the harbor, complete with ships' membrane and flatten it, but anchors. But the piece de each time it refolded. It resistance was the discovery simply wouldn't stay in place." of an old well, which yielded So they used the tacks a treasure trove of archaeo- that Hickingbotham had logical evidence, including a collection of black lacquer Retinal tack, shown with the tip of a special applicator (at designed. The procedure left). It's a matter of tacking the retina back in place. they have developed uses a ceramics, wooden tools, and silicon oil, injected into the the most exciting discovery EYE TACK was the key that Dyson eye, to provide additional of all —a series of unbroken Hickingbotham, a research support for the tacks, which jars, or amphorae, that still Optical experts at the designer of microsurgical are left in the eye until the bore the trademarks of Duke University Eye Center, instruments at Duke, needed retina has a chance to heal. ancient potters. in Durham, North Carolina, to solve the problem. "We —George Nobbe The discoveries were have successfully combined felt we could improve on the quickly dated to the fourth the skills of a watchmaker Japanese design by making 'We do not see the lens century b.c. and ascribed to and the delicate touch of the it easier to insert and remove through which we look." the once-lost city of Akra. microsurgeon to tack badly the tacks," he says. The —Ruth Benedict According to the news torn and folded retinas back retinal tack he ultimately de- agency Tass, Soviet archae- to the wall of the human eye. signed has a bladelike tip RUSSIA'S ATLANTIS ologists surmised that the At last count, Drs. Eugene and a ball head that a micro- ancient city "might have de Juan and Robert Mach- surgeon, using a specially Before the fourth century become submerged, just like emer have used up to five designed applicator, can B.C., the ancient town of the mythical Atlantis." stainless-steel tacks, each just grasp from any direction. "The Akra was perched like a diver — Bill Lawren 2.7 millimeters long, to help instrument has to pass on the edge of a spring- restore the sight of 16 pa- through a one-millimeter board, on the tip of Russia's tients. They used a refined opening in the eye," says Crimean peninsula. The version of a ceramic tack first Hickingbotham. "That's the analogy, in fact, may be more developed in Japan to repair size of the incision the sur- than poetic, for sometime in what was once considered geon makes to work inside it." the dim past Akra simply irreparable retinal damage Machemer and De Juan sank from sight, leaving be- caused by a severe blow to say the new tack offers hope hind nothing but a few tar- the head or such relatively to those whose sight has nished coins on the beaches rare diseases as retrolenta) fi- been severely limited by. this of the Crimean Sea. broplasia and conditions relatively uncommon but Last year Soviet scientists resulting from diabetes. complicated form of retinal decided to launch a compre- Patients suffering from such detachment, in which the hensive search for the lost problems have told doctors retina tears away from the eye city. Trained divers were sent at Duke that the effect was wall and folds in on itself. on an underwater expedition like a black curtain being Previous surgical efforts to to the part of the Crimean drawn partially or completely flatten and reattach the retina adjacent to the supposed site over their sight, usually have failed. of Akra. Almost immediately preventing them from detect- "The tack has given us a the divers found clues ing either color or motion. way to restore sight in cases fragments of pottery and Diver emerges from Crimean The ceramic retinal tack that were formerly consid- treated rocks—to indicate Sea with ancient pottery. " " corunruuunn Washington, E! mnmwm ; or Chichon, : in the Mexican slats of Chia- pas fire; likely to occur Deep in the Jemez Moun- Volcanoes kill some 400 tains of northern New Mex- I people a year, and each ico, on the slopes of one I eruption is different. Some of the world's largest extinct ' are explosive and immedi- volcanoes, two scientists I ateiy devastating. Others, like are building miniature voi- : those-ih Hawan exude a. t canoes of their own. Con- slow >C tained inside steel canisters, disability ts.the biggest the man-made, laboratory- proh t bound models may provide today," says Wohletz, who's information about how the been a practicing volcanolo- real ones work. gist since 1975. "What makes Diver models the first-ever scuba denture: Previously, it was Kenneth Wohletz and a particular volcano explode safe to in go back the water only if your teeth were secure. Robert McQueen have la- when it does is what we're bored for years at the Los trying to find out" SCUBA MENACE and front of the upper jaw. it is Alamos National Laboratory, To do so, aside from creat- featureless except for a tab site of the long-extinct Varies' f their own What is the greatest fear that comes down against the Galdera volcano, trying to in the lab, Wohletz and faced by an aging scuba lower front teeth. When the determine the > McQueen, an explosives diver? Not the bends, not wearer \ bites down, the acter of this natural phenom- expert with the Shock Wave sharks, but the simple fact tab holds the mouthpiece enon. To do so, they have Physics Group, at Los Ala- I that when he loses his teeth, against the lower teeth in a built scale models roughly mos, also | use computer his diving days are over. I comfortable, mouth-closed three feet high and 30 inches simulations and field studies You can't hold the airhose position. The tab is narrow in diameter; loaded them of individual volcanoes mouthpiece with your gums, ! enough to let air pass through with an explosive mixture of around the world to study explains Tom Hurst, a. pros- : the mouthpiece on either aluminum, iron oxide, and varied' types of eruptions thodontist at the University of side. | After the dive the wearer other chemicals {to simulate —George Nobbe Texas. And if you're wearing simply pops out the device magma, or molten rock); i dentures the pressure on his ! and puts normal choppers and added water. The result- your front teeth will pry them in. ! back ing laboratory blast pro- loose in back, causing irrita- "He says he's never been duces a glowing cloud of tion and pain. Hurst So ! more comfortable diving," particles that are ejected as designed the first denture for ! says Hurst, who adds that a spray enclosed in super- divers. He got the idea : because of its simplified heated steam—just like nearly 20 years ago, when as construction the diving den- the real thing. a Navy dentist, he was re- tures cost half as much as "The information we have moving the teeth of an expert ordinary dentures. The next gained from these tests ; in underwater demolition. step is to generalize the allows us to characters "He requested that i delay the technique by producing a relationship betweej procedure because he two-denture system for both size and the energy needed his teeth to do one top and bottom jaws, "I've temperature of the si last job." already got the design," says ploded out of a real volcano, Last spring Hurst produced Hurst. "Now all I need is to says Wohletz. the prototype device for a find a scuba diver with no His concerns include sixty-three-year-old scuba- teeth at all."— Douglas Starr geothermal-energy possibil diving patient who still has ties as well as the potential, his upper molars and lower "There is nothing as perhaps, of one day being front teeth. It's a removable mysterious as a fact clearly able to predict when and acrylic insert that fits like described. where such eruptions as Man-made miniature volcano a tripod against the molars —Gary Winograd those at Mount St. Helens, in erupts at Los Alamos. GEOGRAPHY TEST I cin, in tribute to Hernandez. Tests on the intensely sweet ; If it plant, whose Aztec name R. James Heyl, an admitted takes a while before a i topophile at the University sweetening agent that the ! translates to sweet herb, called tzope- reveal that it contains no of Georgia, has been doing ; ancient Aztecs what topophiles have been licxihuitl becomes de rigueur calories, has so far caused I your friends, don't no toxic effects among mice, among i doing for centuries'—making | blame it on A. Douglas who've consumed it only up geography tests to dis- j Kinghom. His research indi- \ orally, and seems to have no cover whether their students I cates that an herb of that cancer-causing potential. can identify continents, I I how the herb, which countries, cities, rivers, and ! name is 1,000 times sweeter Just ; Aztecs chewed as a mountain ranges. than sugar. | the To start at the beginning, natural sweetener, will be A map lover of long stand- j is matter ing, Heyl admits he knew the University of Illinois : used commercially a what to expect, but even he pharmacologist had some : of boundless speculation. It a popu- was dismayed at the results of Globes are alien objects to help from a graduate student may never become some recent quizzes given most of today's students. ! in discovering the natural lar tabletop item, says King- horn, it could be used growing wild on | but to freshmen and sophomores | compound in schools central Mexican plateau. as a liquid commercial Georgia, quired public as I the on the Athens, j is general rule. Our students The student, one Cesar M. sweetener in everything from where he an asso- a j campus i to feel that they Compadre, told Kinghom that tobacco to mouthwash. ciate professor of geography don't seem j | in any real to know he had unearthed an ancient Preliminary findings have a department that has have need | itself where foreign countries are." description of the plant in i been turned over to a West- long prided on a widely | That, he says, is not only the journals of the sixteenth- port, Connecticut, company respected program. I | Heyl gave his students a incorrect, it could be costly in century Spanish botanist called University Patents, Inc., which will handle the world map on which they the long run, considering j Francisco Hernandez. of the job opportunities awaiting Hernandez called it its potential muitibillion-dollar were to pinpoint 35 40 j by locations. Early in facile geographers in finan- formal Latin name, Lippia commercial applications of numbered i the school year, three of cial market anaylsis, medical dulcis. Compadre and hernandulcin. | his classes combined to research, international bank- Kinghom called it hernandul- —George Nobbe score an average of 57 per- ing, communications, and cent correct. On the last transportation. day they averaged 73. The "I think we don't learn other professor says that only languages routinely, for the one student managed a per- same reasons we just don't fect score. learn where other places Among the places the are located," said Heyl, who classes were asked to locate promises not to give up were such relatively easy without a struggle. spots as Greenland, Australia, "We will continue to work Hawaii, Hudson Bay, Italy, on the problem here," he and Norway. Among the more promises, "but it would be obscure were the Kamchatka much better if the knowl- Peninsula, Sumatra, the edge—and interest—were Red and Black seas, the gained earlier" in the educa- Ganges River, and the Tropic tional process. of Cancer. —George Nobbe "They did horribly," Heyl admitted glumly, explaining, 'Tact /s the ability to make a "In foreign school systems, person see the lightning students are routinely drilled without letting him feel the on geography. But in this bolt." Aztec bust: The Aztecs chewed a plant called tzopelicxihuitl, country, the subject is not re- —0. A. Battista which means sweet herb. Today it's called hernandulcin. " " coruTinjuunn SCIENCE-FICTION ANSWERS QUIZ NO. 4 "9/6L 'ueujopiBH Since 1953 the members oop Aq 'JBM J0A3J0J 9U.1 g of each year's World Science PIQI 'o>jjbio '0 jnm.iv Aq Fiction Convention have 'BLuey ujiM snoAzopusy > voted achievement awards 6961 'Jeuunjg uupr Aq to writers, artists, and editors. 'jeqizuez uo pueis '£ , These coveted awards are L96L "-T J3|f!W IAJ J31IBM Aq called Hugos, named after 'zj/Moqe/7 joj eioiiuerj \/ z The autocuer: These microcomputerized eyeglasses allow the Hugo Gemsbach, publisher £561- 'J9JS9g pajjiv Aq deaf to see speech by flashing special symbols on the lens. of the first science-fiction 'u&w psusiiouiso eq_[ \. magazine. SEEING SOUNDS 'the autocuer could also Many Hugo awards have "The importance of a be used to understand news- gone to stories that were scientific work can be Computerized eyeglasses casters on TV or to follow a forgotten soon afterward. But measured by the number of that virtually allow deaf teacher's lecture from the some classic science-fiction previous publications it people to see speech are classroom's front rows. novels have received justly makes superfluous to read." about to be field-tested, The first autocuers could earned Hugos. —David Hilbert according to the inventor. be commercially available as Here are descriptions of "Our results in the labora- soon as 1987, according to five Hugo-winning novels that "For in much wisdom is tory have been very encour- Beadles, with the price as low fit into the latter category much grief, and he that aging," says Robert Beadles, as $1,000 once mass pro- of time-honored classics. Can increaseth knowledge of North Carolina's Research duction begins. you name their titles, authors, increaseth sorrow. Triangle Institute, "but the Further in the future, he and the years they won —Ecclesiastes 1:18 real test will come when we suggests, the autocuer's their Hugos? give this device to fifteen capacity to identify speech 1. A man commits murder or twenty deaf people who will be expanded: "Improve- in a society where almost will wear it in the real world ments in the device could everyone is telepathic and full-time." make it sufficiently accurate then tries to hide his gutlt The autocuer, as Beadle's to allow a deaf person to from the police, who can read invention is called, consists communicate reasonably well his mind. of a pair of special eye- on a telephone." 2. In a world that has glasses hooked into a pocket —Eric Mishara been shattered by nuclear microcomputer that (via a war, the Catholic Church minimicrophone} differen- "if the world came to an end attempts to help rebuild civili- tiates the sounds of speech, we wouldn't know how to zation by canonizing a Jew- then converts each sound dig a hole to climb into. ish nuclear scientist. to a symbol visually depicted —Steven Spielberg 3. Written by a British for the wearer on an elec- author, this science-fiction tronic eyeglass lens. For "We are preparing our novel deais with the problems instance, the symbol U children for an unknown created by enormous over- flashes on the lens for the world." population. sound "he," or the symbol C —Margaret Mead 4. Another Englishman for the sound "coh." wrote this novel, about an ex- When used in conjunction "The problems of language traterrestrial spacecraft of with traditional lip-reading, here are really serious. enormous size that enters our Beadles says, the autocuer We wish to speak in some solar system. has achieved a high degree way about the structure 5. A Vietnam War veteran of accurate speech recogni- of the atoms. . . . But we wrote this novel about an tion for deaf subjects. Primar- cannot speak about atoms interstellar war and the effects ily for in designed one-on-one ordinary language." it had on the soldiers who The Hugo: Five winners conversation at close range, — Werner Heisenberg fought in it. —Ben Bova became five classics. The largest nation on Earth tries to ride the third wave into the twenty-first century A**mnE9f 1 m i|glpl""r [ )' b & ^""^ its ".. : . ! 1 I^Wk. 1 ' j 7S v ' J ' ; [.-. .,' <** - ; L ?tMI| FUTURE SHOCK ROLLS OVER CHINA BY DANIEL BURSTEIN ^Chen Jianguo is a spiritual cousin to Steve Jobs and the wunderkinder of California garages.^ A typical street scene in the ences on robotics and soft- Chinese capital of Beijing ware development and es- reflects a country locked into tablishes its first solar en- its past. A peddler is selling ergy corporation; China lays peaches and apples from a plans for its first manned mule-drawn cart. Along the space mission late this dec- curbside, an old cobbler re- ade. Chinese researchers pairs worn-out shoes whife a have even built their first handyman bangs metal supercomputer, the Galaxy. sheets into pots and pans. Capable of 100 million op- Nearby, tailor a takes a cus- erations per second, it was tomer's measurements and designed by researchers at begins to sew a pair of pants. the University of Defense Except for the tailor's anti- Science and Technology, in quated sewing machine and Changsha. Only a handful of the honking of automobile more powerful computers horns in the background, lit- exist in the world. tle exists to place the scene Easily the most stunning of in the modern world. But just China's scientific successes below street level, in the has been in the field of bio- dingy basement of an apart- technology. The Shanghai ment building, another China Institute of Biochemistry as- exists, a China of the twenty- tounded the world in the Six- first century. ties by being the first to pro- Chen Jianguo, the young duce synthetic insulin. More chief engineerwho presides recently, it also beat out over this subterranean workshop known as for the liberation of scientific research from Swiss and Japanese researchers to be- the Chun Shu factory, is a spiritual cousin to political control and allotted vast resources come the first to synthesize a transfer RNA Steve Jobs and the California-garage wun- for education and research. Already China molecule. (Transfer RNA, ortRNA, attaches derkinder whose imaginative tinkerings ig- has launched its own supercomputer pro- to an amino acid inside cells and guides it nited the microcomputer revolution of the gram. It has become a world contender in to the correct position for protein synthesis.) Seventies. Unlike them, Chen doesn't work bioengineering and has initiated the most Chinese authorities have also established with the right equipment. He lacks trained ambitious overall technology and research several state-of-the-art joint ventures with staff, He has nowhere to turn for advice ex- program in the developing world. The gov- foreign firms. In Shansi province, for in- pile cept a of books in English, Japanese, ernment's official goal is nothing less than to stance, a pharmaceutical organization has and German—the rudiments of which he has catch up with current Western technology, recently signed a contract with Biogen (a taught himself. these From he has culled a maybe even surpass it, by the year 2000. world leader in recombinant-DNA research, basic understanding of current technology. And at least in part, this quest toward the with headquarters in the United States and The English he speaks is largely limited to future depends on the potent, not-so-secret the Netherlands}. Together the two groups words like IBM, MS/DOS, Motorola 6800, In- ingredients of capitalism— material incen- will carry out extensive tests using gamma tel 8086, RAM, ROM, and EPROM. tives, more encouragement to entrepre- interferon on Chinese cancer patients. But he must be doing something right: The neurs, foreign investment— all in the context Attempts to leapfrog directly into the industrial-process-control computers his of a socialist economy Computer Age are all the more remarkable workshop turns out are bought by local fac- The big question is how successful China in a country where many lack indoor plumb- tories even before they are finished. In his will be. The obstacles are formidable. By ing. Contrasts between the past and pres- spare time— what there is of it— Chen Western standards, the country is a back- ent are the most vivid in the farming regions teaches microelectronics. "Everybody wants ward nation. An efficient national phone sys- of China. During my visit to one of the more to learn," he says through an interpreter. tem is still a dream. The bicycle is the most up-to-date villages, the community leader "Everyone knows technology can help China popular form of transportation. China is trying invited me into his house, a simple, cement- overcome backwardness." to develop and use twentieth- and twenty- floored building of two rooms, a bedroom Science and technology are experienc- first-century technologies in a world barely and a sitting room. Eight people lived there. ing a renaissance after the devastating and out of the 1800s. It was heated with coal, and some bicycles chaotic years of Mao Zedong's "Cultural The country is full of surprises. Almost were lined up in a small closet. Sitting on the Revolution" (1966 to 1976), when universi- every day brings a new headline-making mantelpiece was a television set, placed ties were closed, intellectuals tormented, and development: China becomes the world's there as if to show that this household was research projects zigzagged at the mercy third largest producer of agricultural anti- part of the modern world. And because it of political whim. Today vice chairman Deng biotics (after the United States and Japan); was the leader's house, on a table in the cor- Xiaoping and other top leaders have called China joins with McDonnell Douglas to build ner there was a microcomputer. an advanced U.S. -designed commercial Communes no longer exist in China, and Bathed In magenta light, a technician cratts aircraft, the first such aircraft built outside land that was once collectivized is now being semiconductors in factory a in Beijing (above). North America; China holds its first confer- redivided among families. Much of that re- 38 OMNI C0NTINUED0NPAGES8 WATER WITCHES Officials of the World Bank, in Washington, DC, recently invited a burly, white-bearded author named Christopher Bird to address staff members on a surprising topic: "Dowsing— Its Potential for the Development of Water and Other Resources." In the unlikely setting of the august organization's offices, Bird urged World Bank have repeatedly failed to produce results in he finished second in his last race, the Inter- employees to encourage drought-stricken controlled studies— most of their success national Grand Prix of Japan, driving a Third World nations to seek underground continues to be anecdotal. Porsche. Sevigny serves as a side judge in water using what amounts to witchcraft. Nevertheless, interest in water witching is Vermont's Caledonia County Supreme For centuries, country folk have used rising. The 14-year-old American Society of Court. And he is an ace water witch. dowsing—also called water witching or di- Dowsers, in tiny Danbury Vermont, has "I've found over a thousand wells, and my vining, to find underground water, ores, or about 3,200 members worldwide. The success rate is about ninety-five percent," even lost possessions. Typically, the dowser, membership has jumped about 10 percent he says. He and other dowsers have a vision clenching a forked stick, traverses a field. each year since 1976. These dowsers—and of subterranean hydrology that runs counter An abrupt downward arc of the stick's tip the thousands of others who do not belong to geologists'. The accepted view is that rain indicates "dig here!" to the society— can produce boxes full of and snow seep into the earth, which then Bird has chronicled the success of doz- enthusiastic testimonials from pleased home holds the water like a sponge. Dowsers be- ens of dowsers. In his address to the World owners, who credit them with finding every- lieve that water forms in the earth, perhaps Bank, Bird—who holds a Harvard biology thing from well sites to lost rings. 50,000 feet or more below the surface. They degree, coauthored the 1973 best-seller The In a journal of the World Bank, Steven Ser- say that under great pressure, such water is Secret Life of Plants, and published a book dahaley, formerly a senior engineer in the forced upward, forming "domes." When the on dowsing, The Divining Hand, in 1979— Transportation and Water Department, ex- domes butt against an impermeable layer of argued that dowsing could help arid nations plained why he invited Bird to lecture on rock or clay overhead, they send out "veins." overcome their water shortages. He cited the dowsing. "I've got an open mind about such Usually, it is these veins—which geologists pharmaceutical firm, Hoffmann-La Roche, things," he wrote. say do not exist—that dowsers seek. which in the Sixties and Seventies sent one Apparently, even government officials Although Sevigny's theories on hydrology of its executives, Peter Treadwell, Ph.D., have investigated dowsing. In December may run counter to standard tenets of geol- around the world to dowse for water at pro- 1984, Wesley Groesbeck, a U.S. Army lieu- ogy, his clients readily attest to his powers. posed factory sites. "Roche uses methods tenant colonel stationed in Tunis, tele- Typical is Josephine Alexander, clerk of Ver- that are profitable, whether or not they are mont's Washington County Superior Court. scientifically explainable," Treadwell re- She moved from New York City to an old marked in 1972. "The dowsing method pays Vermont farmhouse and, three days later, the off. it's one hundred percent reliable." water stopped running. Somewhere in the Other companies, including oil and utility buried plastic pipe that ran from a spring to 6/n the companies, have occasionally resorted to the house was a crack that unsealed the pipe dowsing, though most are loath to admit it. mid-Sixties U.S. marines so that the pump could no longer send water But in 1980, Pacific Bell revealed that one of through it. Finding the crack in the quarter- dowsed for its Monterey, California, repairmen, Tom mile-long pipe was virtually impossible. And Harmon, had used two lengths of cable to Vietcong tunnels and traps. the former owner had forgotten where it had find buried conduits. Harmon, who learned Dowsing for been buried 30 years before. the art from "an old rancher," continues to That was in February. By May the house simulated land mines was dowse when looking for hidden phone lines. was still waterless. Backhoeing a trench for Even U.S. marines in Vietnam dowsed for part of the a new pipeline was too expensive, and drill- Vietcong tunnels and traps. In the mid-Six- ing a well was even more costly. training at Camp Pendleton.^ ties, soldiers at a simulated Vietnamese jun- "When I moved to Vermont, one of the first gle at Camp Pendleton, California, were people I saw was a dowser walking through taught to dowse for land mines, communi- a field with a forked stick, which had im- cation wires, and concealed chambers be- pressed me, and I finally decided to get a fore being sent into combat. dowser to help us," Alexander says. The In the past few years, growing numbers of phoned the American Society of Dowsers. dowser she called was Paul Sevigny. urbanites have taken up dowsing. Their The governor of Tunisia's parched Gabes One Saturday afternoon in May, he drove search, however, is not necessarily for water. province, he said, wanted the society to help the 60 miles from Danville to East Montpelier, Using such instruments as plastic rods, find new water supplies. Soon dowsers from where Alexander lived, and marched through pendulums, coat hangers, and L-shaped the society will obtain detailed maps of the the field under which —somewhere— her rods, they wave their dowsing tool over an region and will try to determine— by dows- water pipe lay. To the astonishment of Alex- object, map, or set of questions. They dowse ing the map—the best well sites. ander and her friends, Sevigny's divining rod for archaeological sites, to predict a trend in Frequently, dowsers find what they seek. abruptly arced down. "Here's your pipe, and the stock market, to determine which local Probably the most famous case on record here's where the break is," he told her. restaurant serves the best sushi. Psycholo- occurred in 1950, when a Maine dowser, Several empty holes later, one digger gist Sam Shaffer sees dowsing as an aid to Henry Gross, used his divining rod to pin- asked, 'Are you sure you know what you're counseling clients. "I use it as a check on point three sites on Bermuda where drillers doing?" Sevigny was confident. The next day, my own therapies, asking questions like, Am could tap fresh water. It was a bold predic- with no other recourse, Alexander tried dig- I using the most effective approach with this tion: Geologists had maintained that Ber- ging again. "Six inches from the spot he'd client?' " he says. One woman says she's muda had no underground fresh water at all. shown us, we found the pipe, and it had a "right on target when dowsing for parking Nevertheless, the Bermuda government hairline crack, " she says. spots in Boston." decided to fund a test of Gross's divinations. A box in Sevigny's office bulges with With such claims being made, it's no won- Well-drilling rigs went to work. In each of the thank-you letters from such clients. He even der that among scientists, dowsing has all three spots that Gross had indicated, the has a contract issued by the Vermont Agency the credibility of ghostbusting. The U.S. De- drillers hit fresh water. of Transportation. For $100 a day, he was to partment of the Interior, for instance, has is- Few dowsers can afford to wing their way dowse for water to replenish a spring in the sued an official statement on water dowsing to Bermuda to display their abilities. For most, town of St. Johnsbury that had dwindled. that's less than laudatory. It reads: "Case dowsing is a sideline, an activity more often Presumably that contract, issued in Decem- histories and demonstrations of dowsers engaged in for fun than for profit. Paul Se- ber 1984, was the first such legal arrange- seem convincing, but when dowsing is ex- vigny, past president of the American Soci- ment between a state and, in effect, a sor- posed to scientific examination, it presents ety of Dowsers, is a retired Air Force officer, cerer. As he has done with all of the $26,400 different picture. ... it a In many areas, is a veteran of the World War II glider corps his dowsing has earned so far, Sevigny do- difficult to drill and not find water." Dowsers and the Korean War. A former race-car driver, nated his fee to a local charity because he 42 OMNI CONTINUED ON PAGE 92 — — FICTION How do you kill the beast lurking in a child's dangerous dreams? BY BRUCE MCALLISTER No one so strong, no one the more fortunate left— in so lovely cryogenic ice. in all the things of this world One by one, like prison as the eagle doors slamming, the ready for flight and world's zoos converted. the jaguar One by one, like the fastest whose heart is a mountain, Centric printers, the peti- —Aztec poem tions began, the media- tions, the rankings, the race It took them twenty years to get places on the arks to die. Not the fifty or one for the species left alive. hundred the forecasters But the arks were full. had imagined, but twenty. The New York Zoologi- There were rumors of cal Society had a waiting gene-splicing experi- list of three thousand. The ments gone wild. Rumors National Zoo in Washing- of ecological chain reac- ton, eight thousand. The tions more complex than Basel Zoo, two thousand. the world's finest biologists The Darwin Center in the could understand. Rumors Galapagos, eight hundred of extortion—chemical and fifty. The London Zoo, four biological blackmail thousand five hundred. The against the natural resources of Africa, Asia, South Alberta game farm, two thousand five hundred. America, even North America. The rumors of ac- The Woburn Wild Animal Farm in Britain, three cidents and pure anarchic terrorism—poisonings thousand two hundred. The Phoenix Zoo, one hun- of antelope herds in North America, toxic rain at dred thirty. The Gladys Porter Zoo, two thousand the Kenyan National Parks, epidemics in the Jer- four hundred. The San Diego Wild Animal Park, sey Zoo on the British Channef Islands—were not five thousand three hundred. There were seven rumors at all. They were fact, Beckman knew. hundred ten arks, and all were full. Test-tube births, The animals began to die. They died exponen- artificial insemination, and cross-species surro- tially. They died in their natural habitats and in the gates had not been enough, and the dreams of confines of wild-animal parks and zoos. There were cloning, genetic engineering for adaptation, and suddenly new strains of resistant bacteria, new pharmaceutical miracles remained dreams. strains of virus. New organ collapses from toxicity, Within twenty years five hundred thousand spe- new, unforeseen breeding problems. It was a tidal cies were gone, and the number was rising. wave of death, and it took two decades. He had Lawrence Beckman was a systems analyst for seen it in the figures even then, given his training, one of the three largest aerospace firms in South- while others had not. ern California. He had been one for fifteen years. In ten years, one hundred thousand species were He had been born in Los Angeles, had never left, gone from the earth, only the genetic material of but had married a woman from a distant country PAINTING BY MARSHALL ARiSMAN — — and this, he realized now, was like leaving, black nose —the features they both knew world. But like the others, she felt it. The very much like leaving. He was Caucasian. so well. When he stepped up to the screen fear, it was a new world, these United He was the only child of a late second mar- to erase it, he found he could not. It was States. It was so new that sometimes the riage. He was a widower, hers. It bothered no one. It was the best Hmong, who called themselves the Free That was all, and it was not enough. night-light she could have, and unlike some People, died in their sleep . . . from the fear. It could not keep his daughter alive. things in their lives, it was still alive, and he The doctors did not understand it. It was He withdrew their savings, a little more just could not do it "respiratory arrest." It was a "cardiac nerve than fifteen thousand dollars. He con- He awoke that night from the terrible si- conduction problem." It was the same tacted his stockbroker to have the few lence in the house, rose in fear, rushed bangungut syndrome that had killed young stocks they owned-another four thousand through the darkness, struck himself pain- men in the Philippines for centuries. It was dollars — liquidated, The bank, at his re- fully against a wall, and finally reached her the defoliants or nerve agents used in the quest, made out a cashier's check for room. She was still breathing. war. The doctors just did not know, though nineteen thousand dollars to the Los An- He slept on the floor by her bed, where some agreed: it was the fear. geles Zoo in Griffith Park. he could hear the sibilant whisper of her They had felt it in China two hundred His daughter, See Chee, stood beside lungs and know she still lived. years ago and had fled to Laos because him as he did this. He could feel her There in the darkness he could imagine of it. There, only thirty years ago, they had pressed against him as they watched the her round moon face, her straight black felt it again: They had fought America's voice-activated teller type the check for hair, and the epicanthic folds of her al- "Secret War" against the bloody Pathet Lao, them. She was shaking. He tried not to feel mond-shaped eyes. He could see her and now the invading North Vietnamese it. He thought instead of her labored mother, May Nagua, his wife. He could were going to kill them for it . . . and so, as breathing at night, all the times he had had imagine her people underthe towering An- if to say thanks, America's CIA had gotten to waken her in the last two months, afraid namite Cordillera, on the cratered Plain of them out. The Free People were in Mon- he wouldn't be able to. Jars, in the shadowy Laotian highlands tana now, in Seattle, in Providence, and in They went together to the ancient post their eyes, their full lips, their straight hair, Southern California. The older men and office in their little town, where they mailed women still wore brass bracelets, were su- the check in an old-fashioned business perstitious about colors, and told stories envelope with a covering letter that read: about animals that talked like people. The "Sirs and Madams: Here is a start, If you children wore clothes from Feclco and Tar- will make a place at your zoo for Li Chu get, T-shirts with the names of rock groups, bff the and her baby Chu Li, the two pandas that and were good at the fast games you could the People's Republic of China has offered pandas were allowed to play on machines like television sets. But you in good faith, we will send you four even now the men and women, young and die, if they could hundred dollars monthly. We also promise old, might die in their sleep. A sound at to campaign energetically in our commu- not be saved, a place not night, the troubled breathing, a breathless nity and in others toward raising a fund of found for them, body in the morning. Like May Nagua's thirty thousand dollars annually for the per- brother. Like her grandfather. then See Chee would die petual care of these precious animals." They felt it even now: the fear. Many of the words were See Chee's. She too, in the was only ten, but she had gotten good at She had been told, so many times. Do night, like all the others.^ this, and he felt pride. not leave the hospital alone at night, May The check was returned in a week. Nagua. Do not leave the car doors un- Attached was a letter expressing the locked if you are going to travel surface zoo's appreciation but explaining how cli- streets. Do not leave the freeway for sur- mate control alone for two animals like the face streets even if there is congestion. Do ''Mandarin pandas" would reach ten thou- their fear. Lying there, he felt their fear. not stop on the way home, except for gas sand dollars per year, and how there were She did not awake crying that night, and don't even stop for gas. Fill your tank at medical, dietary, security, and facility he did not have to waken her. But at break- home. Do not stop anywhere, for anything. overhead costs as well. The letter did not fast it began again, and there was nothing It is a dangerous world out there, May Na- give a total figure. It did not need to. he could do. He could not even get out of gua, he had said again and again, and she When he went to her bedroom later that his chair; he could not go to her again and seemed to believe him, and finally he day, it was not homework she was doing hold her. He could not move. He could only stopped worrying. "It's a dangerous world on her terminal. She had the facemaker think of the catalog-ordered carbine lying out there," he said to her one day, cheer- program in again, her back hunched to him, wrapped in an old flower-print sheet in the fully, joking at last. "Seventy-five percent and was drawing one of the pandas on her darkness o'f his closet. of Los Angeles is minorities]" But she screen. Its features told him it was the The next night, as he lay on her floor, he looked at him so confused that he was sorry mother, Li Chu. The face was familiar, and heard her breathing stop twice. he had ever said it— even as a joke. he could see that she was working from a She died downtown — out of gas— near color printout on the floor by her stool. May Nagua was a nurse when he first a park—taken as she walked the few He took a step toward her, but she erased met her, and a nurse when she died. It was blocks to phone him, perhaps to ask him it before he could reach her. in a hospital in Inglewood, and the week what she should do. When she turned, her dark arms in her he was admitted for prostatitis, she took lap, he saw how red her eyes were. very good care of him. It was the first time Not long after he saw what was happen- "You don't have to hide it," he said. he had ever been away from his work. It ing, he took his daughter to San Diego, to She said nothing. She averted her eyes, was the first time his shy manner had not the Twelfth World Conference on Breeding found another program, booted it, and be- gotten in the way with a woman. Endangered Species in Captivity. They sat gan her homework. May Nagua lived with her family in Foun- together in folding chairs on the sun- When he went to her room that night to tain Valley, to the south, in the Hmong com- washed grounds of old Balboa Park— only tuck her in, she was asleep. The screen munity there. It was a large family, with a blocks from the famous zoo — and listened glowed eerily in the darkness, a new face chief, Chief Yuur. Even now, few of them carefully to somber men and women speak staring back at him, the hesitant smile more spoke English well, fewer still had careers of "invalid depression," "the founder ef- human than animal. The bearlike head, the like May Nagua's, She spoke English very fect," and "genetic drift." There were no big, oval eyes, sad bandit mask, broad, well; she had a career in the round-eyed television cameras this time, few videotext 46 OMNI — reporters, and the audience was sparse. That night he dreamed of an animal fair, speaking, that her own mother never died. He watched See Chee closely, wonder- of a tiger, and a gun. If the pandas die, your wife is indeed gone, ing how much she understood. Could she and your daughter should be dead, too. see it? Could she see what it meant—the At the funeral—a long, quiet affair with That is what she is feeling, Mr. Beckman. weakening by captive inbreeding, feeble beautiful ceremonial dress and many It is a 'survivor's guilt ' — not unlike what genes bred to feeble genes, the pairs too words spoken by Chief Yuur, the entire combat veterans experience." weak to start their kind over again? How community in attendance—the chief found He did not know what to say. He waited, the only sciences that ottered hope were Beckman and spoke to him. With a calm and the woman went on: "We must work to still far in the future? more terrible than any rage would have help her understand that this equation- She was, he saw, doing her best to un- been, this broad-faced man— this "gate- aesthetic as it may be psychodynami- derstand. She was a good girl. He thought keeper" of his people— said: "You took her cally— is a fantasy, that papdas are ani- of the day— one Saturday in a smoggy away, Lawrence Beckman. Now she is mals— not people— that in the end they summer—when a little girl had come run- dead. This is how it happens. Now there is really do not matter. That she— your ning into the house, brushing at her leg a child who has neither world and no daughter— is what matters to those who with a frantic hand, tears everywhere. "Was mother. You will be the mother she does love her." He nodded and managed to ask on my leg!" she'd cried. "Was on my leg!" not have, and you will do it the best you about the breathing. It was all she could say. "What was on your can." When Beckman finally turned, all the "I am not familiar with the syndrome leg, Daughter?" May you describe," the Nagua had asked, woman answered, holding her daugh- "but I wouldn't worry, ter's hands in hers Mr. Beckman. Your like little birds as if to daughter is only a tame them. See Chee Even if your friends won't talk to you, child. If I'm not mis- Laotian had answered: "A Toshiba's will. taken, the straitjacket, Mommy! answering machine refugee syndrome A big yellow and you describe afflicts black straitjacket!" SKIM^MjI^iSS^Bil^ft^S only adult males. But Her mother had I can certainly look smiled, he had into it if you would like laughed, and See me to." Chee had only cried He nodded and more, so he had left. He was alone; stopped. They had they both were alone. hugged her, made Words meant nothing. lilliitll soothing sounds, and The professionals together, like a little weren't there at night army, had gone out- to hear the labored side to find the new breathing, to hear it wasp nest in the raf- stop, to waken his ters and to rid the daughter and make world, once and for '&& the breathing begin all, of the terrible yel- again. They weren't low and black "strait- there in the day to jackets," the only an- watch the tears and imals she said she shaking, the inabil- did not love. Unlike other answering machines, the new Toshiba won't give ity to concentrate, silent treatment. It says nice things like message," or "Three Then it was a yel- you the "No the obsession. They low moon he was messages. Monday 8:15 pm..!' Our remote feature lets you playback, could not possibly seeing, over a lit- skip, repeat or even change messages from anywhere. Press a button, understand. will give the time inTouchwitinbmorrow tered park down- and Toshiba always you If the two animals day. it's even more dependable town, where they'd of See, TOSHIBA were allowed to die— than your friends. ' found the body, and if they could not be t hih aJ^/^T£3o7d^fIw47o he was tearing away saved, if a place from it, yelling inside, could not be found for forcing himself to lis- them somewhere ten to the man who was speaking now in faces were watching, waiting for an expla- then his daughter would die, too, in the the bright sunlight of Balboa Park, where nation he could not give. night, like all the others. everything said was said without hope. It was four months after the funeral that That night, as she lay in bed, he told her See Chee began to show excessive inter- It took him six calls, He was shaking, but the story of "The Beginning of the World," est in the pandas, whose plight he and she in the end he got them the appointment, the first of the many Hmong folktales May had witnessed on their living-room screen. and for a moment he could see some hope Nagua had known by heart in two tongues. Within a month it was clear to him that in her eyes and could imagine that her It began: "The first man on Earth was Lou she was living for the endangered pair. breathing slowed. Tou. His wife was See Chee, They came When he took her to a professional, the The Los Angeles Zoo was where it had ." from a door in a mountain. . . woman said, "She exhibits what we call a always been — in asmall "wilderness" area When he was through, because See posttraumatic stress syndrome, Mr. Beck- toward the center of the city. But the oil Chee asked him to, he sang her favorite man. Her mother's death was a trauma, wells had been eating into that wilderness song, the one that began: "We went to and she is working that trauma out with an for twenty years, and the zoo was not what the Animal Fair ... the birds and the equation. In this equation the infant panda it had once been. The wells bobbed and beasts were there ... the old baboon by and panda mother have become your dipped like stiff birds a mere hill away from . . the light of the moon , was combing daughter and your wife. If she can keep the zoo compound, and the domes inside ." his auburn hair. . . them alive she can feel, psychologically looked like blue insect hives, all life hidden 48 OMNI — " from view. He had brought her here twice porous face with the blush of broken cap- son. Sitting down, she kept her smile. It when she was younger—to this "Animal illaries. The eyes were a wonderful blue, was someone else's smile, and Beckman Fair." May Nagua had been with them. round and with crow's-feet at the corners. had to look away. There was little traffic as they ap- The hair was white and wavy, making "We are concerned about the pandas," proached. The bridge and the main gate Beckman think of a snowy egret or, finer he said quickly. still, "Of it led to— such hazy memories from his a snow leopard— both gone now. course you are," the man answered,— own childhood —were still there, but the "What I'm trying to say, Mr. Beckman," "bul you both must understand " his crowds were not. The public wasn't really the man in the doorway was saying, "is that hands were folded on the desktop with invited. You could apply for a visitor's pass, I'm not sure I know what I can do that hasn't wonderful control as he —looked at the fa- yes, and visit with a group. But you would already been done." ther, then the daughter "that there are wait. six months, and when your day finally He wouldn't look at her, Beckman real- many, many animals and many, many peo-— came there would be metal detectors, ized. She did not exist for him. ple petitioning for each. Every animal voice-stress analyzers, and trained dogs "You can let us sit down," Beckman said. He had his own script, Beckman saw. In sniffing tor the poisons some crazy might The man had little choice. As they sat, it they were children. He had dealt with try to bring in for the animals of this ark. he took his place slowly behind a surpris- children like them before. The magic, the sense of wonder, was ingly clean teak-veneer desk. — "Excuse me," Beckman said. "You talk gone. Yet no one complained. What mat- "What we don'! understand " Beck- of petitions. We hear constantly how im- tered now was thai at portant they are. Yet least two of each kind we also hear of ani- somehow went on mals awarded places eating, sleeping, and, at thiszoo and others whenever possible, with petitions much breeding behind the shorter than those of blue walls, the arm- many unplaced ani- ies of attending nu- mals. Could you tell tritionists, vertebrate us why this is, Mr. biologists, epide- Ringer?" miologists, and vet- The curator smiled. erinarians all looking "The cases you're on, guarding against referring to, Mr. a virulent world. Beckman, are those The curator's of- where assessments fice was on the fourth by the scientific com- floor of the new munity carry special administration build- weight. You may be ing. Through the win- thinking of the Triche- dow of the reception- chus manatee, the ist's office they could parasitic wasps, or look down on the the so-called Hous- compound below, ton toads— since dome after dome, these have received pleasant green tar- more than the usual mac walkways and attention in the me- what landscaping dia. As it turns out, remained. The eu- Mr. Beckman, cases calyptus, oleander, like these are much sand pines from Tur- Toshiba's mini stereo system offers an optional double CD player that more frequent than key and Africa— lets you program up to 30 selections at a time. The system includes a dual anywhere the lay these were trees the cassette deck with double-reverse, AM/FM stereo receiver, automatic turn- public has been able air couldn't kill. As he table, 2-way bass reflex speakers and a 5-band m touch with Tomorrow to, shall we say, 'vote' stared at them, his graphic equalizer. The Toshiba SystemV-11.lt TOSHIBA a species in?" The daughter's hand in not oniy sou nds g reat, it even ta kes req uests. man paused. "I'm Toshiba Anwr , ca , lne . p S2 To]ows Rosd , Wsyne, N , 07a70 his, he felt a breeze sure you're aware of through the glass and what those assess- ." behind his eyes saw ments might be. . . ghostly squirming things, tawny bodies- man began, the script as clear to him as it It was, Beckman realized, a question. memories that were not his of wild conti- would ever be. When he did not answer, the curator an- nents, bright birds exploding from dark rain "We?" the man stopped him. "You're re- swered for him; forests, icy waters where white predators ferring to the girl?" "Genetic uniqueness, for one. Genetic basked in the light of a hundred suns. . . . Beckman looked at See Chee, at her diversity, for another. Genetic-engineering Then tarmac again, blue domes, trees, dark hair, moon face, wide eyes. When the possibilities would be a third. There are shrubs somehow holding on. anger came, he let it. He needed it. many others,—Mr. Beckman." He was still holding See Chee's hand, "The girl, Mr. Ringer, is my daughter." To "Shouldn't " Beckman began, stum- his own hands unsteady, and the curator See Chee he said gently, "See Chee, this bling, the script— gone. "Shouldn't some was in his office doorway at last, address- is Mr. Ringer—the man who runs this zoo." special weight " He stumbled again, and ing him, saying, "Mr. Beckman, I really don't She stood up graciously in her new white then somehow the script was there, and know what I can do for you. My assistant, pantsuit, smiled, and said, "I am very he was rushing with it: "Shouldn't some John Neumann, tells me he spoke with you pleased to meet you, Mr. Ringer." She of- special weight be given to the votes of an- at some length last week." fered him her brown hand, which he finally other group of 'experts";' I'm speaking here He was not going to let them in. took. She knew how important this was. of the children's groups, the Scouts, the :i "Yes, Beckman said. They had rehearsed it many times. It might YWs and YMs, the petition clubs, the school it . The curator stared back, was a white, all make a difference . . with the right per- groups like my daughter's, not to mention — the zoological societies and wildlife fed- zoo is ranked fourteenth in the nation by cated of sciences— computer modeling, erations whose memberships are primarily budget, yet we have two of the seven re- multivariant analysis, parallel processing young people. These young people have maining specimens of the Hawaiian Kuauai . . . matters that I'm sure you, with your been petitioning for the pandas for over oo, four of the remaining eighteen sandhill background, understand better than I, Mr. two years now, ever since the day you and cranes in existence, and six of the remain- Beckman." the other zoos in this country dropped ing dozen Canis lupis nobilis. We even He said it gently. them —whatever your. reasons—from your have, it pains me to say, two of the last But then the voice changed again. priority lists. I'm speaking here of the hun- eight Haliaeetus leucocephalus— simply "They are the ones who must decide dreds of thousands, if not millions, of chil- because neither DC, nor San Diego, nor which specimens are of the greatest im- dren and. their expert votes." He took a the Bronx, nor any of the other thirteen fa- portance to mankind's future, Mr. Beck- breath. "I would like to suggest, Mr. Ringer, cilities ranked above us in budget have man, and they have decided that your that children know best what animals they room for them. This is a national disgrace, pandas are not. We are not speaking of love, what animals should be kept in trust Mr. Beckman. The two Haliaeetus speci- the last two pandas in the world, Mr. Beck- in for them for a future neither you nor I will mens are sick. They are dying. They are man. There are ten others China. These be around to see." victims of what specialists call inbreeding two are not even a reproductive pair, Mr. When the curator didn't interrupt, he depression, and we cannot find a place for Beckman." The man stared at him. continued quickly: "It completely aston- them in one of our finest arks." He could feel it rising in him, threatening ishes me, Mr. Ringer, to take him. The fear. that our zoos — the Was See Chee feel- ? very institutions ing it too Was she once entrusted with looking through the instilling a love of wild- window, her breath- life in our children ing beginning to can no longer hear change? Was she a child's voice." drawing a panda's The silence lasted face behind her eyes, only a moment, and to make it go away? when the curator Was she remember- spoke, Beckman ing the stills, the vi- knew they had lost. deotexts, the pages "That isn't quite fair, and pages of print- on the anatomy, Mr. Beckman. But I out suspect you know behavior, and needs that." The man was of the bei shung, calm. He was still which she kept in her smiling. "As you must dresser drawers like be aware, children snapshots ... of had considerable say someone she missed in the selection last very much? year, for this very zoo, Then, to his sur- of the California prise, he was stand- brown bear—a spe- ing; he was shouting cies of profound sen- at the man before timental significance him: "Why in God's to the people of this name isn't our own state. We have eight Toshiba Beta VCR has some real competition. Introducing Toshiba VHS Sfafe Department— healthy bears now, It offers the quality and features you've come to expect from our Beta. Like our God Almighty we're happy to re- 4 heads, a 1 6-function wireless remote, one-touch time recording, 4-event, State Department— plus compatibility. port. They also had 7-day programmability, 117-channel cable interested in those And Toshiba offers a larger selection of VHS imouch withTomorrow considerable in Mr. Ringer? say pandas t and Beta models than anyone else. In fact, when the selection of the TOJ^fc HIR/Y Why isn't it in the best it comes to VCR's, no one stacks up to Toshiba. * ' .-.-.;:.: VtTt^tL,™ black-footed ferret r fosliiba . he^f82 olowa Road. to&Wie.WJ U747Q interests of our na- one of our most tion to grant those touted national trea- animals asylum— sures—for the Bronx simpty as a ges- Zoo, with six specimens. And the western Beckman marveled at the feeling in the ture—simply as a gesture to a nation as sea otter for Marineland. And the harp seal man's voice, at the compassion for the poor important to this world and our own fu- for the National Zoo." Haliaeetus leucocephalus. ture as China is? The cost of keeping the He paused for effect. "Animals that chil- "You must certainly be aware," the man pandas aiive is nothing—nothing!—in the dren happen to find charming because was continuing, pained, sympathetic, "that face of national budgets, Mr. Ringer!" they have anthropoidal features or are oth- we have had the entire frustrating matter The office filled with silence. He could erwise 'adorable' are, I assure you, well of your Ailuropoda meianoleuca—your two feel See Chee's eyes on him. represented in the arks of this nation — or pandas— in mediation for over two years A look of pity passed across the cura- as well represented as they can be, given now. There are simply too few intensive- tor's face. the times we live in, Mr. Beckman." care spaces on the arks in this country. "That is an interesting question, Mr. Beckman felt his face grow hot. He could They are vacated only by death or by al- Beckman," he said. "Everything is sym- not look at the man. He started to rise, but terations in the priority lists. The U.S. me- bolic in international intercourse, isn't it? the man was not through with him. The diation team — all trained scientists— has Even animals. You have certainly touched voice had changed. It was now, somehow, no vested interests. They have not only your on a truth that young people today— iike full of compassion. two meianoleuca on their consciences, but your daughter— must understand as they "Mr. Beckman, we do not have room in six thousand other species, as well. To this make their way into a future neither you nor ." . . for our zoos even for our own species. This painful job they bring the most sophisti- I will be around to see. He paused 50 OMNI effect, then went on. "You ask about China, yet apparently you have not been keeping up with the finer points of the news9 " Again it was a question. "No," Beckman answered, looking clown. "I have not." "Apparently you have missed the subtle problems we are having with Pek Ziao and 1 his glorious 'New Republic. The press can be stupid at times, Mr. Beckman, but there were glimmers of this as much as two years ago." The voice was condescending. "I really do not understand how you could have missed it." My wife, Beckman wanted to say. My wife . . . my daughter . . . "The fact is," the man continued, "our trilateral economics are 'strained.' We are, so to speak, 'denormalizing relations' with the New Republic. We are not willing to risk what we have with considerable agony forged in Third World stability with Mos- cow. We are willing to make certain sym- bolic sacrifices— no matter how sincere the Chinese may be in their concern for their animals." He paused one last time. "I imagine the mediation team has been un- der considerable pressure, Mr. Beckman." The words came so quickly. What did the man mean? "Does this answer your question?" "What are you saying 7 " Beckman whis- pered. "You know what I am saying." ." "It isn't possible. . "Of course it is possible, Mr. Beckman. Don't be naive." It was possible— this, the simplest of ex- planations. All the rest— scientists, media- tions, computer models —were meaning- less in the face of it, the diplomatic game, the quiet war of nations where the casual- ties never knew it was a war. He closed his eyes. See Chee was there and the pandas. He saw epicanthic folds. He saw moon faces and almond eyes moving in a war through the shadows of the highlands. He saw diplomats arguing in teak-veneer rooms like this one, review- ing still photographs of the almond-eyed bei shung, shaking their heads while the sad eyes, the almond eyes looked on from the bamboo thickets unable to understand it even as the war fell around them. He opened his eyes. "How far are they from admission?" he asked quietly. "How many slots down the list are they?" "Far too many, Mr. Beckman." The man was curt. He was standing now. He was not going to let it start up again. "How many?" Beckman repeated. "Eleven or twelve, I believe— but the ex- act number doesn't matter. It is not going to happen, and I refuse to encourage false ." Write or call iifri hope. If you'll excuse me. . . afreecatalog :>^ Beckman stared at him. j Corp. "Is it over?" See Chee whispered. ftnl. iVashramon. Wl ,53074 "Yes. It is over." F I-800-oo8-S"65.-;; Telex 229715 The man walked them to the door. .'v;scc»m,i'8';i!-'242-7220 There, See Chee's hand in his—warm, alive— he turned one last time and said CONTINUED ON PAGE 94 HS BY PETE TURNER fry i I Jaipur, Delhi, Sanaras, Maihura, Ujjain:The names toll the wonders of the East. There turbaned maharajas once dwelt in regal splendor. And there stand these structures, breathtaking monuments to astronomy. reports of Western sci- men could not make ence, he sent to, Europe small, accurate devices for aid. But not even the in metal and glass, so detailed stellar tables . Jai Singh worked on a given to him by the King giant scale, with ma- of Portugal could pro- sonry. The graduated - ; - ir charts accu- circleofthellrnE' out to create charts that most precise instru- would mark the posi- ment of its kind. The tions of the stars more Samrat Yantra (above precisely than any yet and right) is a sundial made. For that, he 90 feet high and 100 feet needed the world's best across. It is still used in observatories. He built Jaipur today. the first in Delhi in 1710 As seen in these Pete (opening page). Turner photographs, Jai His tools were noth- Singh left. a legacy not ing like today's tele- only of knowledge but of scopes. Indian crafts- stunning beauty.DQ These satellites will be dreadnoughts of the skies. They will have their own weapons. They will have flotillas of space destroyers around them, says this star warrior of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative IRJTERV/IEUU n March 23, 1983. Presi- a high-tech astrodome matched dent Reagan asked by or shared with the Russians American scientists to that would make "nuclear weapons devise a system of weapons impotent and obsolete/' At a in space that would screen the time when the United States and United States and its allies the Soviet Union face each other from nuclear-missile attacks. with 10,000 warheads apiece, Several billion dollars' worth of stockpiles equal in explosive the research later, it is still uncertain power to a million Hiroshimas, whether the star-wars scenario idea has an undeniable appeal. will ever become a reality, But the Early polls showed the public was proposal— called the Strategic overwhelmingly in favor of Defense Initiative (SDI)— has be- Reagan's suggestion, come one of the most hotly Defense pundits, politicians, debated ideas in history. and strategic-theory professors, The President's personal vision however, are not so easy to remains that of a perfect defense, convince. Among them the battle PHOTOGRAPH BY PAT HILL over star wars rages more fiercely by the rebuttals proliferate, and a truly informed Soon afterward he crossed the street to join month. Recent copies of Commentary mag- opinion demands serious study. One crucial the fledgling U.S. satellite effort. He then re- azine, a particularly energetic arena of de- difference between the two sides has ceived an offer from the newly formed NASA bate, have fairly exploded with intellectual emerged: The star-wars supporters are the to head its theoretical research division in missiles and scorching laser beams of ar- optimists, above all in the matter of U.S. Washington at the start of the Sixties. Jas- gument and counterargument over SDI. technology. They believe a nearly invulner- trow moved the division to New York, chris- The brouhaha in Commentary was ig- able defense can be developed to knock tening it the Goddard Institute for Space nited by a university physicist who is in favor missiles out of the sky so efficiently it won't Studies. His aim was to get away from the of the idea, a fairly lonely position among pay for the Russians to try to overwhelm it capital's overly worldly spirit. "I am not a po- academics. In the defense industry, star wars with missiles, decoys, or sabotage. The litical animal," he readily confesses. In 1977 has its supporters, including many scien- Russians will have to answer it not with more Jastrow became adjunct professor at Co- tists who are not in the pocket of the admin- missiles but with their own defense technol- lumbiato teach a course, Stars, Planets, and istration. But scientists on campus, includ- ogy. The happy result would be a shared Life, for both the geology and astronomy de- ing some with a lot of experience in weapons strategy of mutually assured survival, a de- partments. The accessible course became design and strategic analysis, tend to be fensive arms race that can then beat a hugely popular, and class sizes grew to 500 skeptical. downward path through arms reduction to students. This irritated some of the faculty of Carl Sagan and Nobel laureate Hans total abolition. President Reagan insists he the astronomy department, and political Bethe, for instance, are prominent support- will share star-wars technology with the Rus- machinations began. Finding these painful, ers of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based sians, Some find this difficult to believe. in midterm Jastrow handed over his class to Union for Concerned Scientists (UCS), which Another conclusion in the midst of the de- a colleague and walked away from Colum- published a debunking book, The Fallacy of bate: The future of star wars, even its ulti- bia for good. His departure did not go un- Star Wars, last year. Physicist Sidney Drell is mate strategic impact, hinges on cost. Here regretted. "The world would be a dull place codirector of the Stanford Center for Inter- guesses vary hugely and are muddied by without a Jastrow," says a senior geologist. national Security and Arms Control, which secrecy. The administration set up the SDI Since then each summer he has taught also put out a cautionary report. In late spring Planets, a similar course of equally stupen- 1984, the UCS collected signatures from dous size, at Dartmouth. more than half the membership of the Na- A kind of academic journalist, Jastrow tional Academy of Sciences for a petition seems inspired to put complex ideas in terms against weapons in space. anybody can understand. His forte won him smart These scientists deride the "perfect de- QThe a couple of hundred early-morning science fense" as a "half-Buck Rogers, half-R T. bullet Is a device the size shows on CBS, and he turned the material Barnum" fantasy. A leaky star-wars um- into three books, Stars and Giant of a two- Red brella, they allege, will cost trillions, will never Dwarfs, Until the Sun Dies, and The En- work efficiently, and will be ridiculously vul- pound coffee can. It has chanted Loom. nerable to cheap countermeasures. Nu- a computer Jastrow invited interviewer Anthony Liv- clear strategists say that a permeable screen ersidge to his apartment in New York City. that senses the oncoming will be no different in impact from the antinu- The telephone rang constantly, while his as- clear missile defenses of the past, which the missile and sistant rushed to send a letter to The Wall Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1977 was de- Street Journal. steers the bullet into ii3 signed to banish. Their concern is that any attempt to install or even research it will fur- Omni: Why is this debate so acrimonious? ther upset arms control, causing the arms Jastrow: I haven't heard any rude words, ex- race to escalate even precipitously. more cept ones directed against me! But it has Physicist Robert Jastrow, professor of occurred before, in the first round of the ABM earth science at Dartmouth College, in Han- organization under General James Abra- [antiballistic missile] treaty. Then there was over, Hampshire, New rejects these fears. hamson to pursue an R&D program with a the argument over the H-bomb. But it's the And he has roundly defended star wars since budget envisioned at $26 billion over the next first time that the public has learned that the President's famous speech- He has mer- five years. Research into electromagnetic rail physicists do not address their own subject cilessly ribbed the UCS for a couple of early guns, charged-particle beams, chemical matter objectively. errors. For example, the union first calcu- and X-ray laser beams, and other futuristic Omni: How strongly do you feel on this issue lated that it would take 2,400 laser-equipped methods to shoot down intercontinental bal- right now? satellites to shoot down Russian missiles but listic missiles is proceeding apace. Jastrow: The subject was completely out- then revised this figure to a low of 162. This In Jastrow's rosy view, effort is the just fine. side my attention until I read an article on and another miscalculation figured promi- He sees the SDI beating a path to a nonnu- the MX and learned that the Soviets, starting nently in Jastrow's Commentary article, "The clear world, and he has laid out his reasons in 1972, have built up their arsenal to awe- War Against 'Star Wars.' " In it he accused in a book, How to Make Nuclear War Obso- some levels. When an argument erupted star-wars critics of work." doing "shoddy lete, published by Little, Brown. He predicts over where to base the MX, it was obvious Theirfuriousrebuttalspointed out that pro- that if all goes well, star-wars defenses will to me that the way to take care of the MX star-wars analysts had made similar mis- be built by both major powers and that this was to defend the silos. Then I learned that takes, and they referred to Jastrow's "blunt will lead to mutual "builddown," and the nu- the ABM treaty prevented the government sword" and his "parroting" of others' criti- clear stockpiles will vanish. from doing that. Official policy since 1972 cisms. They spoke of his "hyenalike tenden- Jastrow's can-do confidence about the has been to keep America defenseless cies" and his dependence on research done success of a technological initiative befits against Soviet nuclear attacks. in defense labs at Los Alamos and Law- his long involvement with the space pro- When I heard the President's star-wars rence Livermore. gram. off He started as a bright kid from the speech, I thought, What a relief he's finally Jastrow, however, is far from the only man Bronx, who entered Columbia University at broken the mold of this conventional think- under attack in this notoriously no-holds- sixteen, and emerged with a Ph.D. in phys- ing. Then all hell broke loose, as the scien- barred debate sparked with accusations of ics at the start of the Fifties. A protege of J. tists and journalists proceeded to ridicule irresponsibility, breaches of scientific ethics, Robert Oppenheimer, at Princeton, he dis- and criticize him. My friend Richard Garwin and egregious misstatements. Indeed, star tinguished himself in theoretical physics with [of IBM, Harvard, Cornell, and a leading wars poses tangled questions, most of the two papers and subsequently joined the Union for Concerned Scientists expert] said answers highly speculative. Arguments and Naval Research Labs, in Washington, DC. it won't work. And others called it technolog- 62 OMNI _*au ical in if pie the sky. I thought such a nice will bring the world closer to nuclear war. realistic estimates made. My sixty-biilion- idea draws so much ridicule, it bears inves- They then proceeded to calculate the tech- doilar figure is for only a first-generation, two- tigation. So I looked into their criticisms and nical feasibility of this program that they had layer defense of limited effectiveness, esti- wrote my article supporting the President's already decided was destabilizing. Their mated conservatively at ninety percent. The proposal, and Dick Garwin wrote an article calculations showed the program was costly, three- or four-layer defense, which has laser saying every fact in my article was wrong. ineffective, and easily countered. Those cal- and particle beams and exotic technology, But I had checked every fact carefully with culations were later revealed to be wrong. would cost more. My own estimate is based my sources in Livermore, Los Alamos, and But why didn't these competent theorists on the cost of the Manhattan Project, infla- the U.S. government. So I then proceeded check their results and find these errors? tion, and the rule of thumb in the defense to look into his allegations one by one. I found People make errors—Einstein made lots! He department that, just as Cadillacs and that every allegation he made was wrong, was famous for them in calculus. My conclu- Chevies cost so much per pound, fancy mil- except one, as I documented in my rebuttal. sion is that when these physicists got the itary and NASA satellites cost so much per Omni: The controversy seems so bitter; are result, it agreed so well with what they had pound. Maybe it will be two hundred fifty you bitter? already decided, they relaxed their guard. billion dollars. But you must remember that Jastrow: No, I'm mostly amused. To be called Omni: You believe that whatever we come our budget for the offensive deterrent from a hyena is in my view a rare honor because up with, sooner or later the Russians will now till the end of the century is upwards of it suggests that I must be doing something come up with a counter to it? seven hundred billion dollars! right. Theroretical physicists usually do rather Jastrow: No, there's a false symmetry in this Omni: You say you fear "the possibility a few dry things that don't get anyone's gears en- rendering. Sometimes offense or defense is years hence of a preemptive Soviet strike gaging. That Dr. Garwin was incensed stronger, and that disparity persists for dec- aimed at the . . . termination of the existence call enough to me a hyena implies a certain ades or for centuries. Since World War 1 1 the of the republic." Isn't that paranoid? effectiveness to my actions. I have simply offense has ruled with the nuclear weapon. Jastrow: It's an old saying that even para- put into the record the changes they have After half a century or a century, the tables noids have enemies. The Soviet fifth-gener- made when estimating the number of satel- may turn, and while you can't prove it, every- ation missile is possibly as accurate as the lites needed to shoot down Soviet missiles. thing so far looks good for the defense. Gen- MX, our newest generation. They now have Their estimates have dropped over a nine- eral Abrahamson, director of the Strategic about ten thousand accurate first-strike war- month period from twenty-four hundred to Defense initiative, has maybe twenty-six bil- heads, enough on paper to preempt and win one hundred sixty-two. The public should lion dollars to find out what it will cost. The a nuclear war. We have fewer than one thou- know what the accuracy and credibility of issue is exactly what it will cost for us to put sand comparable warheads, the UCS is on this vital point. up an effective defense. The Soviets have not attacked us be- Omni: Why do you suggest they are biased Omni: You say that this system will cost sixty cause of our submarines. While these aren't toward finding star wars a waste of time? billion dollars, plus fifty percent, but don't effective in destroying Soviet military tar- Jastrow: This small, vocal band ofphysicists others predict it will cost up to one trillion? gets, they are a deterrent against a Soviet has stated that they believe defending the Jastrow: That trillion-dollar figure is off the attack on our cities and civilians. If the So- United States against Soviet nuclear attacks wall and has no justification in any of several viets destroy our bomber bases, sub pens, and missile silos, won't the American presi- dent fire the submarine missiles, signing the death warrants of one hundred million Americans in the inevitable Soviet counter- strikes? My bet is that he won't. But the Soviets can't be sure he won't, so there's a deterrent there. Four or five promising non- acoustic methods for detecting submerged submarines are now being researched. And as a consequence, it is very unlikely that the submarine deterrent will remain intact. Our whole safety hangs by that one thread, which could snap sometime in the Nineties. Omni: Isn't it a pity to militarize space? Jastrow: Space was militarized in the Six- ties, when the first military satellites went up. The air during World War I was not militar- ized until airplanes started reconnoitering battlefields. The enemy discovered you can't fight a war with somebody snooping on you, so they started to shoot them down. So it is with space. Omni: Shouldn't people be afraid that these space weapons will be used for offensive purposes? Jastrow: A laser beam can burn a hole in your hand on the ground from space, but who would use a billion-dollar satellite to burn a hole in your hand? These things are only cost effective if you can melt a hole in the skin of ten or more one-hundred-million-dol- lar missiles with them. We will never dream of using them for those other purposes. Omni: Electromagnetic rail guns, fifty-thou- sand-mi!e-an-hour antimissile slingshots are going to deliver two hundred kilos of projec- tiles, so couldn't they deliver bombs? — Jastrow: The rail guns will have a payload of be as nervous about the other side building sands of satellites, not one hundred. only a couple of pounds. The question is more missiles. If you have an .eighty-per- Dr. Garwin insists a fast-burn booster of whether a satellite you pass off on the ad- cent-effective defense and you have ten Midgetman type would cost about fifteen versary as defensive actually has nuclear thousand warheads and the Soviets have ten percent more than an ordinary Midgetman, weapons on board. A projectile getting down thousand, only two thousand of theirs can eleven and one half million dollars per war- in four minutes would be hard to protect get through. So you can get rid of eight thou- head. So three thousand [single-warhead] against the atmospheric destruction upon sand of your warheads and still have parity! Midgetman boosters, his proposed Soviet reentry. it will And cost a billion dollars to get They will build a defense, to which I say hur- countermeasure, would cost only thirty-four up a big satellite carrying a couple dozen rah—that's the purpose of building ours and one half billion dollars. But according to warheads. You can reach the same level of or they will try to overwhelm ours. They can- present drawing-board estimates and Dr. destructiveness with a couple of SS eigh- not because they could not spend two and Fletcher's projections, implementing this fast- teens [ten-story-high Soviet missiles] on the a half trillion to reach the new level. burn feature would mushroom the cost to ground, each carrying twenty warheads. Omni: How do you come up with that figure? one hundred million dollars per warhead. Omni: What about bombs small enough to Jastrow: The Soviets have spent at least five [Using this figure, the cost of the counter- fit into a suitcase? hundred billion dollars on their missiles. If measure would be three hundred billion dol- Jastrow: That turns out to be a bag of beans. one in five gets through, and that's a very lars. James C. Fletcher, a physicist who for- Carl Sagan keeps talking about bringing conservative figure, then they must build five merly headed NASA, chaired the defensive them inside a bale of marijuana, playing on times as many missiles to get the same technologies study panel that set out to as- the fact that we can't close the border very number through as if the Americans had no sess the technical feasibility of SDL— Ed.] successfully. But if we spent a couple of bil- defense. Five times a half trillion is two and Dr. Garwin has again misstated the prob- lion, we could seal that border tighter than a a half trillion. able cost of his countermeasure by one of drum. There are classified methods that Omni: If the costs favor the defense by such those famous factors of ten or more! make it extremely easy to detect from the air a large amount, why do the UCS people, or Omni: Will star-wars defense lead to a com- any fissionable material coming into any port Dr. Dreil of Stanford, still insist that attack is petition in defense, replacing MAD [Mutual or any city like Washington with extraordi- much more effective than defense? Assured Defense] with a strategy of Mutual sensitivity. in it is nary So, effect, impossible Jastrow: Drell, Garwin, and I agree on the Assured Survival? to smuggle in a bomb through a port or into cost of the defense—approximately a billion Jastrow: When even an eighty percent ef- Washington. If we've eliminated every threat dollars per satellite. Since each satellite can fective defense is in place on both sides, the to the existence of our republic from ballistic destroy about twenty SS eighteen missiles nuclear-tipped missile will no longer be a and cruise missiles down to bombers, and costing at least one hundred million dollars useful weapon for any purpose. Builddown a bale of marijuana is the last single threat, each—or two billion altogether—the cost will commence, with the end of that road then we'll seal off the goddamn border! trade-off is at least two to one in favor of the leaving just a few weapons on each side. Omni: You believe that the SDlis a path that defense. Other estimates yield favorable ra- Omni: Many people hold the President's in- will do away with nuclear weapons? tios up to five to one. Garwin has inflated the telligence in less high regard than you do. Jastrow: With a defense you don't have to cost of our defense by saying it needs thou- Jastrow: President Reagan has more brains in his thumbnail than many academics have in both cerebral hemispheres. He saw the possibilities in this technology as no politi- cian has before. Omni: What system do you see being set up as the initial star-wars defense? Jastrow: The most mature technology is the smart bullet. So you should have a two-layer defense of smart bullets in the early Nine- ties. The smart bullet is a device about the size and shape of a two-pound coffee can having a computer that senses the oncom- ing missile and steers the bullet into it. The bullet has no gunpowder in it, but the force of the collision releases more energy than TNT, and it blows up the warhead. Once the warhead is damaged in any way it cannot take part in a nuclear explosion. Omni: Won't this delicate satellite setup be tremendously vulnerable? Jastrow: No. Satellites are vulnerable now because no one is shooting at them. The first airplanes that went up in World War I were vulnerable — they were canvas stretched over wood. So they were armored and had machine guns installed in them, and they became the formidable machines they are today. These [SDI] satellites will be the dreadnoughts of the skies. They will have their own weapons. They'll have flotillas of space destroyers around them. They will as- sess as a potential threat every object that leaves the face of the earth. Omni: What are the weakest points in your own views? Jastrow: The premise that a defense shoot- ing down eight or nine out of every ten So- 1 viet warheads is a rate of attrition that will SECRETS ENTRUSTED prevent the Soviets from ever going to nu- TO A FEW clear war against us. If madmen gained control of a Soviet state, we can't be sure what they would do. Whether the Soviets would be daunted by a two-and-one-half- trillion-dollar expenditure for the purpose of destroying the United States seems to be the weakest point. Omni: Don't military computers screw up all the time? Isn't sophisticated military hard- ware notoriously unreliable? Jastrow: If you want an error-free computer, you build two of them. If each is good to the order of one operation in a billion, the chance of a failure with two is one in a billion squared, one in a million trillion, in effect, zero. Omni: People are also afraid that the SDI system involves a loss of human control. Jastrow: When the SDI system is in place, should some isolated missile appear in space that doesn't fit into our book for planned launches, there's plenty of time for FORBES word to go back to the United States to eval- hostile act or a uate whether it is actually a MAGAZINE commercial launch. If a massive Soviet threat occurs, there will be no ambiguity about the OFFERS YOU A propriety of our response. Remember, the response to a Soviet attack on our system MILLIONAIRE'S completely beyond our hands. Cur- now is are some things that can whether the warn- PARADISE THERE rently, have no idea we not be generally told— things you ings that come in are real or not. In spite of ought to know. Great truths are dan- checks and counterchecks, if we make a OCATED IN THE EXOTIC Fiji gerous to some—but factors for per- now in our computerized warning Islands, Laucala is a 4.7 square- mistake sonal power and accomplishment in system, the result is catastrophic, if we make mile island that offers a few the hands of those who understand mistake on the other system, all we do is discerning people the vacation a them. Behind the tales of the miracles fire off some lasers. opportunity of a lifetime. and mysteries of the ancients, lie cen- Omni: Isn't there a gap between our artificial From Laucala's well-equipped deep turies of their secret probing into intelligence and a future computer that could sea boats, fish for the big ones—Black nature's laws—their amazing discov- think like a human? Pacific Sailfish, Black Marlin, Shark eries of the hidden processes of man 's Jastrow: Your brain puts out nearly twenty- and feisty Barracuda! mind, and the mastery of life's prob- five watts, has ten billion neurons, and ten to Or just come and relax. With its lems. Once shrouded in mystery to fifteen power connections. To have that many privacy and modern facilities, exclusive avoid their destruction by mass fear run on twenty-five watts is the Laucala combines all the natural connections and ignorance, these facts remain a name of the game. That's on the distant ho- attributes of a tropical paradise without useful heritage for the thousands of match the power of intrusion of the normal tourist rizon The software to the men and women who privately use the brain at its best is a question of architec- routine. A real "Bali Hai" for those who them in their homes today. ture, and challenges like the star-wars bat- want, and can afford, the best in sport tle-management computer will carry us to- fishing and vacationing. THIS BOOK FREE its full achievement, I basic charge of $1650 per ward that aim. But There is a The Rosicrucians (not a religious organi- is to 7 nights guess, lies centuries ahead. But what a person. This charge covers up zation), an age-old brotherhood of learn- century in the scale of the cosmos? The and 8 days with all meals. Included in ing, have preserved this secret wisdom in flight to They now beings in the universe that I was talking about this package are the round trip their archives for centuries. practical helpful- at the end of my book are the beings in the and from Nadi International, and use invite you to share the their teachings. Write today for a mature life of the cosmos. The solar system of a fishing boat (captain, crew, bait and ness of free copy of the book, the "Mastery of was a cloud of dust five billion years ago. all normal gear) for 4 days. Life. " Within its pages may lie a new life of The average age of the stars in our galaxy Other amenities available are: opportunity for you. is seven and a half billion years. The beings tennis, waterskiing, snorkeling, scuba are and a half pool. around us, if they're there; two and swimming The ROSICRUCIANS provide billion years older than we are. Laucala's clear azure seas (AMORC) Omni: Are you a skeptic about UFOs? a magnificent environment for under- San Jose California 95191, U.S.A. Jastrow: Why would a being with the ability water exploration and photography. SEND THIS COUPON to cross the distance between stars bother The waters surrounding the island Scribe KDE pick up rare tropical fish and to stop down in New Hampshire and abound with The ROSICRUCIANS (AMORC) 60- some woman and give her a physical ex- flowered coral reefs. World-famous San Jose, California 95191, U.S.A. is great Mastery Life, amination? This is atypical report. I am sure mile-long Heemskerck Reef a Please send me the free book the of explains how I may learn to use my facul- they would be immune to all our lethal instru- attraction for divers. which ties and powers of mind. ments, but somehow they never descend on For information, please write: Name the White House. They always come down Magazine Noel Douglas, Forbes Address or two peo- in remote places where only one York, 1001 60 Fifth Ave., New NY City can see them. On the other hand, I think ple or call 212/620-2461. ZIP we must be prepared for this contact. DO FICTION MOZART IN MIRRQRSHADES BY BRUCE STERLING AND LEWIS SHINER IroiI ram the hil! north of the city, Rice saw eighteenth-century Salzburg spread out below him like a half-eaten lunch. Huge cracking towers and swollen, bul- bous storage tanks dwarfed the ruins of the St. Rupert Cathedral; thick, white smoke bil- lowed from the refinery's stacks. Rice could taste the familiar petrochemical tang from where he sat, under the leaves of a wilting oak. The sheer incongruity of it delighted him. Like the phallic pumping station lurking in the central square of the convent, or the ruler- straight elevated pipelines ripping through Salzburg's maze of cobbled streets. A bit tough on the city, maybe, but that was hardly Rice's fault. The temporal beam had focused at random on a point in the bedrock below Salzburg, forming an expandable bubble connecting this world to Rice's own time. High, chain-link fences surrounded the square mile of the complex. Rice had been inside them for two years, directing teams all over the planet as they ordered Nantucket whalers caulked up to serve as tankers, or trained local pipe fitters to lay down line as far away as the Sinai and the Gulf of Mexico. Now, finally, he was seeing it all from the outside, despite the objections of Sutherland, the company's political liaison. His mere pres- ence, she claimed, would only worsen the fu- fe ture shock that had left the city reeling. Rice had no patience with her attitude. The PAINTING BY ETIENNESANDORFI " plant was up and breaking design records, attacks on the pipeline. "Freedom, sir," Jefferson said. "Freedom and Rice was due for a little R and R. "Oh, loosen up, will you, Sutherland? Some is the issue." The secretary returned with a A moped sputtered up the hill toward him, groupie of Mozart's gave me the hat, dust-caked bottle of sherry and a stack of wobbling crazily. The rider couldn't keep his Therese-Maria-Angela something-or-other, clear plastic cups. Jefferson, his hands vis- high-heeled, buckled pumps on the pedals some broken-down aristocrat. They all hang ibly shaking now, poured a glass and tossed while carrying a huge portable stereo in in the out together this music dive downtown. I it back. Color returned to his face. He said, crook of his right arm. The moped lurched just liked the way it looked." "You made certain promises when we joined to a stop at a respectful distance, and Rice "Mozart? You've been fraternizing with forces. You guaranteed us liberty and recognized the music from the tape player; him? Don't you think we should just let him equality and the freedom to pursue our own Symphony 40 in G minor. be? After everything we've done to him?" happiness. Instead we find your machinery The boy turned the volume down as Rice "Bullshit," Rice said. "I'm entitled. I spent on all sides, your cheap manufactured goods walked toward him, "Good evening, Mr. Plant two years on start-up while you were playing seducing the people of our great country, Manager, sir. I am not interrupting?" touch football with Robespierre and Thomas our minerals and works of art disappearing "No, that's okay." Rice glanced at the bris- Paine. I make a few night spots with Wolf- into your fortresses, never to reappear!" The tling hedgehog cut that had replaced the gang and you're all over me. What about last line brought Jefferson to his feet. boy's outmoded wig. He'd seen the kid Parker? I don't hear you bitching about him Sutherland shrank back into her chair. "The around the gates; he was one of the regulars roll his playing rack and on late show every common good—requires a certain period of, who waited day and night outside the fence, night. You can hear it blasting out of every uh, adjustment begging for radios, nylons, jabs of penicillin. cheap transistor in town." "Oh, come on, Tom," Rice broke in. "We But the music fall had made something else "He's propaganda officer. Believe me, if I didn't 'join forces,' that's a lot of crap. We into place. "You're Mozart, aren't you?" could stop him I would, but Parker's a spe- kicked the Brits out and you in, and you had "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, your ser- cial case. He's got connections all over the damn-all to do with it. Second. If we drill for vant." place back in Realtime." She rubbed her oil and carry off a few paintings, it doesn't "I'll be goddamned. Do you know what that cheek. "Let's drop it, okay? Just try to be have a goddamned thing to do with your lib- tape is?" erty. We don't care. Do whatever you like, "It has my name on it." just stay out of our way. Right? If we wanted it. "Yeah. You wrote Or would have, I guess a lot of back talk we could have left the damn I should say. About fifteen years from now." British in power." Mozart nodded. "It is so beautiful. I have Jefferson sat down. Sutherland meekly ^Marie Antoinette not the English to say how it is to hear it." poured him another glass, which he drank By this time of the other most gate people sprawled across the bed's at once. "I cannot understand you. You claim would have been well into some kind of pitch. you come from the future, yet you seem bent expanse of Rice was impressed by the boy's tact, not to on destroying your own past," mention his command of English. The stan- pink satin, wearing just "But we're not," Rice said. "It's this way. dard native vocabulary didn't much go be- a scrap of History is like a tree, okay? When you go yond radio, drugs, and fuck. 'Are you headed back and mess with the past, another branch black-lace underwear back toward town?" Rice asked. of history splits off from the main trunk. Well, "Yes, Mr. Plant Manager, sir." and leafing this world. is just one of those branches." Something about the kid appealed Rice. to through an issue ofVogue.^ "So," Jefferson said. "This world— my The enthusiasm, the gleam in the eyes. And, world— does not lead to your future." of course, he did happen to be one of the "Right," Rice said. greatest composers of all time. "Leaving you free to rape and pillage here "Forget the titles," Rice said. "Where does at will! While your own world is untouched a guy go for some fun around here?" and secure!" Jefferson was on his feet again. polite to President Jefferson. He's had a hard "I find the idea monstrous beyond belief, in- At first Sutherland hadn't wanted Rice at time lately." tolerable! How can you be party to such the meeting. But Rice was the company ex- Sutherland's secretary, a former Haps- despotism? Have you no human feelings?" pert on temporal physics, and Jefferson had burg lady-in-waiting, stepped in to an- "Oh, for God's sake," Rice said. "Of course been pestering the American personnel with nounce the plane's arrival. Jefferson pushed we do. What about the radios and the mag- questions about time holes and parallel angrily past her. He was tall for a local, with azines and the medicine we hand out? Per- worlds. a of blazing hair mane red and the shiftiest sonally I think you've got a lot of nerve, com- Rice, for his part, was thrilled at the chance eyes Rice had ever seen. ing in here with your smallpox scars and your to meet Jefferson, Thomas the -first Presi- "Sit down, Mr. President." Sutherland unwashed shirt and all those slaves of yours dent of the United States. He'd never liked waved at the far side of the table. "Would back home, lecturing us on humanity." Washington, was glad the man's Masonic you like some coffee or tea?" "Rice?" Sutherland said. connections had made him refuse to join the Jefferson scowled. "Perhaps some Ma- Rice locked eyes with Jefferson, Slowly, company's "godless" government. deira," he said. "If you have it." Jefferson sat down. "Look," Rice said, re- Rice squirmed in his Dacron double knits Sutherland nodded to her secretary, who lenting. "We don't mean to be unreasonable. as he and Sutherland waited in the newly air stared for a moment in incomprehension, Maybe things aren't working out just the way conditioned boardroom of the Hohensalz- then hurried off. "How was the flight?" Suth- you pictured them, but hey, that's life, you burg castle. "I forgot how greasy these suits erland asked. know? What do you want, really? Cars? feel," he said. "Your engines are most impressive." Jef- Movies? Telephones? Birth control? Just say 'At least," Sutherland said, "you didn't wear ferson said, "as you well know." Rice saw the the word and they're yours." that goddamned hat today." The VTOL jet slight trembling of the man's hands; he hadn't Jefferson pressed his thumbs into the from America was late, and she kept looking taken well to jet flight. "I only wish your polit- corners of his eyes. "Your words mean noth- at her watch. ical sensitivities were I as advanced." ing to me, sir. only want ... I want only to "My tricorn?" Rice said. like "You don't it?" "You know I can't speak for my employ- return to my home. To Monticello. And as "It's a Masonista hat, for Christ's It's ers," sake. Sutherland said. "For myself, I deeply soon as possible." a of antimodern symbol reaction." The Free- regret the darker aspects of our operations. "Is it one of your migraines, Mr. Presi- mason Liberation Front was another of Suth- Florida will be missed." dent?" Sutherland asked. "I had these made erland's nightmares, a local politico-reli- Irritated, Rice leaned forward. "You're not up for you." She pushed a vial of pills across gious group that had made a few pathetic really here to discuss sensibilities, are you?" the table toward him. 70 OMNI "What are these?" make your gear on stage look like a god- this Sutherland? Is she your girlfriend?" Sutherland shrugged. "You'll feel better." damned clavichord." "No. She goes for the locals. Danton, After left, Jefferson Rice half-expected a "Really? I would give anything to see that. Robespierre, like that. How about you? You reprimand. Instead, Sutherland said, "You I can't understand why you would leave." got anybody?" seem to have a tremendous faith in the proj- Rice shrugged. "So I'm giving up maybe "Nobody special. Not since I was a kid." ect." fifteen years. When I get back, it's the best "Oh yeah?" "Oh, cheer up," Rice said. "You've been of everything. I Anything want." "Well, when I was about six I was at Maria spending too much time with these politi- "Fifteen years?" Theresa's court. I used to play with her cals. Believe me, this is a simple time, with "Yeah. You gotta understand how the por- daughter— Maria Antonia. Marie Antoinette simple people. Sure, Jefferson was a little tal works. Right now it's as big around as you she calls herself now. The most beautiful girl ticked off, but he'll come around. Relax!" are tall, just big enough for a phone cable of the age. We used to play duets. We made and a pipeline full of oil, maybe the odd bag a joke that we would be married, but she Rice found Mozart clearing tables in the of mail, heading for Realtime. To make it any went off to France with that swine, Louis." main dining hall of the Hohensalzburg cas- bigger, like to move people or equipment "Goddamn," Rice said. "This is really tle. In his faded jeans, camo jacket, and mir- through, is expensive as hell. So expensive amazing. You know, she's practically a leg- rored sunglasses, it he might almost have they only do twice, at the beginning and end where I come from. They cut her head for passed a teenager from Rice's time. the end of the project. So yeah, I guess we're off in the French Revolution for throwing too "Wolfgang!" Rice called to him. "How's the stuck here." many parties." ." new job?" . Rice coughed harshly and drank off his "No they didn't. . Mozart set a stack of dishes aside and ran glass. That Ottoman Empire hash had un- "That was our French Revolution," Rice his hands over his short-cropped hair. "Wolf," tied his mental shoelaces. Here he was said. "Yours was a lot less messy." he said. "Call me Wolf, okay? Sounds more opening up to Mozart, making the kid want "You should go see her, if you're that inter- . . . modern, you know? But yes, I really want to emigrate, and there was no way in hell ested. Surely she owes you a favor for sav- to thank you for everything you have done Rice could get him a Green Card. Not with ing her life." for me. The tapes, the history books, this Before Rice could answer, Parker arrived job— it is so wonderful to be around here." at their table, surrounded by ex-ladies-in- His English, Rice noticed, had improved waiting in spandex capris and sequined tube remarkably in the last three weeks. "You still tops. "Hey, Rice," Parker shouted, serenely living in the city?" anachronistic in a glitter T-shirt and black- £/-/e was drunk "Yes, but I have my own place now. You leather jeans, "where did you get those un- are coming to the gig tonight?" on history out of control, hip threads? Come on, let's party!" "Sure," Rice said. "Why don't you finish up careening Rice watched as the girls crowded around around here, I'll go change, and then we can the table and gnawed the corks out of a crate go out for some Sacher torte, okay? We'll under him like a great black of champagne. As short, fat, and repulsive make a night of it." motorcycle of as Parker might be, they would gladly knife Rice dressed carefully, wearing mesh one another for a chance to sleep in his clean the imagination, he felt body armor under his velvet coat and knee and sheets and raid his medicine cabinet. britches. He crammed his pockets with like St. Michael "No thanks," Rice said, untangling himself giveaway consumer goods, then met Mo- from the miles of wire connected Parker's the archangel on speeds to zart by a rear door. recording gear. Security had been stepped up around the The image of Marie Antoinette had seized castle, and floodlights swept the sky. Rice him and would not let him go. sensed a new tension in the festive abandon of the crowds downtown. Rice sat naked on the edge of the cano- Like everyone else from his time, he tow- all the millions that wanted a free ride into pied bed, shivering a little in the air condi- ered over the locals; even incognito he felt the future— billions, if you counted the other tioning. Past the jutting window unit, through dangerously conspicuous. projects, like the Roman Empire or New clouded panes of eighteenth-century glass, Within the club Rice faded into the dark- Kingdom Egypt. he saw a lush, green landscape sprinkled ness and relaxed. The place had been con- "But I'm really glad to be here," Rice said. with tiny waterfalls. verted from half of the lower "It's like . . some young . like shuffling the deck of history. At ground level, a garden crew of former aristo's town house; protruding bricks still You never know what'll come up next." Rice aristos in blue-denim overalls trimmed marked the lines of the old walls. The pa- passed the joint to one of Mozart's groupies, weeds under the bored supervision of a trons were locals, mostly, dressed in any Antonia something- or- other. "This is a great peasant guard. The guard, clothed head to Realtime garments they could scavenge. time to be alive. Look at you. You're doing foot in camouflage except for a tricolor Rice even saw one kid wearing a pair of okay, aren't you?" He leaned across the ta- cockade on his fatigue cap, chewed gum beige silk panties on his head. ble, in the grip of a sudden sincerity. "I mean, and toyed with the strap of his cheap, plastic Mozart took the stage. Minuetlike guitar it's okay, right? It's not like you hate all of us machine gun. The gardens of Petit Trianon, arpeggios screamed over sequenced cho- for fucking up your world or anything?" like Versailles itself, were treasures deserv- ral motifs. Stacks of amps blasted synthe- 'Are you making a joke? You are looking ing the best of care. They belonged to the sizer riffs lifted from a tape of K-Tel pop hits. at the hero of Salzburg. In fact, your Mr. Par- Nation since they were too large to be The howling audience showered Mozart with ker is supposed to make a tape of my last crammed through a time portal. confetti stripped from the club's hand- set tonight. Soon all of Europe will know of Marie Antoinette sprawled across the painted wallpaper. me!" Someone shouted at Mozart, in Ger- bed's expanse of pink satin, wearing a scrap Afterward Mozart smoked a joint of Turk- man, from across the club. Mozart glanced of black-lace underwear and leafing through ish hash and asked Rice about the future. up and gestured cryptically. "Be cool, man." an issue of Vogue. The bedroom's walls were "Mine, you mean?" Rice said. "You wouldn't He turned back to Rice. "You can see that I crowded with Boucher canvases: acres of believe it. Six billion people, and nobody has am doing fine." pert, silky rumps, pink haunches, knowingly to work if they don't want to. Five-hundred- "Sutherland, she worries about stuff like pursed lips. Rice looked dazedly from the channel TV in every house. Cars, helicop- all those symphonies that you're never going portrait of Louise O'Morphy, kittenishly ters, clothes that would knock your eyes out. to write." sprawled on a divan, to the sleek, creamy Plenty of easy sex. You want music? You "Bullshit! I don't want to write symphonies. expanse of Toinette's back and thighs. He could have your recording studio. It'd I listen own can to them anytime I want! Who is took a deep, exhausted breath. "Man," he 72 OMNI CONTINUED ON PAGE 101 : : -.-- - ' -' . = , PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM PAYNE ng hew careers in its wake. But according to workplace ^The infant technologies of robotics, aquaculture, bioengineering, materials science, and fiberoptics will open arenas we can barely fathom3 will program themselves," says Alfred Ma- thiasen, a careers expert at Clemson Uni- versity. Sociologist Robert Ayres, of Carne- gie-Mellon University, agrees: 'Although employment for computer programmers hasn't peaked," he says, "we may be over- stating the need for these people; there's a wide scope for automating the writing of programs." New computer technologies, moreover, may reduce the need for chip de- signers as well. Indeed, computer-aided engineering systems allow engineers with no special expertise to fashion customized in- tegrated circuits for whatever purpose they have in mind. 6. AIR-TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS. 'Air-traffic controllers complain about stress, and one reason may be that they rarely see the air- craft they're directing," says Carnegie-Mel- lon's Ayres. When people can operate a ve- hicle with direct visual contact—truck drivers watching the road, for instance—-they do well, Ayres notes. "But an air-traffic control- ler's information is degraded because it as well. Designs generated by these com- bers will be transmitted to headquarters comes to him from a screen, making it effi- puters will shunt directly to computers run- electronically) and bookkeepers (com- cient for a computer to handle the work." ning the factory, obviating the need for blue- puters will crunch the numbers with ease). While some passengers might find it un- prints and, hence, draftsmen. And in the front 3. MIDDLE MANAGEMENT. Blue-collar nerving to ride a jetliner controlled by some office, executives will dictate to word proc- workers will not be high tech's only casual- silicon-brained R2-D2, Ayres says, "It works essors that understand English, rendering ties. In fact, according to Solberg, "Com- fine for the space shuttle." A Reagan admin- typists and stenographers obsolete. puters are really a bigger threat to white-col- istration plan for switching the air-traffic con- 2. CLERKS. U.S. Department of Labor pro- lar workers." Solberg points out that while trol system to high tech would cost about jections through 1995 call for about 66,000 the move to replace muscle with machinery $20 billion over the next 20 years but would fewer mail carriers and postal clerks. Elec- is already well under way, the next revolu- simultaneously save $25 billion. A single air- tronic mail will reduce mail volume, accord- tion —replacing minds with chips— has just traffic controller could then do the work three ing to the economists, and smart machines begun. One dwindling group will be middle or four do today. will sort what paper mail remains. Most other management—those who advise top man- 7 OTHER PROFESSIONALS. Through 1995, clerks will be seeking new employment as agement on such issues as marketing, stra- the Department of Labor projects an in- well. For instance, analysts from Arthur D. tegic planning, and engineering. As Cetron creasing need for physicians, veterinarians, Little, the international consulting firm, pre- puts it, computer networks and expert sys- and lawyers. In the long term, however, fore- dict the demise of the keypunch operator. tems that simulate a specialist's decision- casters like Cetron predict a drooping de- As debit cards with built-in electronic chips making skills will "gradually usurp the mid- mand as expert computer systems come into come into vogue, computers at the sales dle manager's role as information gatherer workaday use. Already, for example, an ex- desk will instantly transfer the price of the and analyzer." perimental "doctor on a chip" at the Univer- purchase from the customer's bank account 4. INCOME-TAX SPECIALISTS. The need for sity of Pittsburgh has demonstrated profi- to that of the store, eliminating the need for income-tax accountants is likely to diminish, ciency at diagnosing illnesses and backroom clerks to key in the data. As elec- especially if income-tax simplification ef- prescribing treatments. The same sort of tronic banking comes into its own, in fact, forts succeed. And regardless of policy, so- technology will eventually be synthesized for experts predict a dwindling need for bank phisticated computer programs can already a wide spectrum of professional expertise. clerks. Many telephone-operator jobs will analyze your financial status, apply an ex- Thus, tomorrow's law office would include succumb to automation. And proliferating pert's knowledge, and minimize the tax you not a hive of high-priced attorneys but rather electronic databases will make file clerks must pay. Whether used by individuals or a single attorney for complex cases and a obsolete. Robert Bruce, director of place- professionals, such programs will speed up team of paralegals who consult computers ment at the Claremont Graduate School, in the time it takes to complete a tax form, re- as they handle routine work. Orange County, California, predicts that other ducing the number of professionals re- 8. FARM LABORERS. Tomorrow's farms will victims will include meter readers (the num- quired for the task. be automated food factories requiring mini- 5. COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS. Ironically, mal human muscle. The farmer will become Assembly-line workers, conceptualized on the one career to succumb to the computer rev- an agricultural engineer who, according to overleaf, will be replaced by the computerized olution is apt to be that of the computer pro- some industry scenarios, will command his factory, symbolized above by abstract circuitry. grammer, 'Artificial-intelligence computers empire from a central tower, remotely oper- 76 OMNI " ating an army of robot field hands that plow, schools now offering this specialty- libraries, and research centers. These jobs plant, irrigate, cultivate, and harvest. As the Worcester and the University of Maryland- require high levels of responsibility: To con- labor proceeds the farmer will use his com- supply less than 10 percent of the demand trol an organization's data is to shape its puter to plan plantings, order supplies, and for qualified fire-protection engineers. It's not memory. schedule maintenance. just technology that makes fire engineers' 3. AQUACULTURISTS. "If world population 9. LUMBERJACKS. Tomorrow's house is apt prospects hot: "Society is more litigious, continues to grow at the present rate, it will to be made not of wood but of tough, main- which makes industry more prone to prov- soon double, generating jobs in housing, tenance-free plastic composites, a gift from ing it took reasonable measures to prevent transportation, and food," says the Univer- the burgeoning field of materials science. mishaps," says Lucht. 'Also, with busi- sity of Vermont's Lawrence Simmons. Many And as the nation's publishers switch from nesses increasingly dependent on com- of the new food producers will be harvesting ' paper to viewscreens, fewer trees will be cut puters that may contain irreplaceable data, the oceans at fish ranches, seabed planta- for pulp. Computers and robots designed to even a small fire can be disastrous. Terrorist tions, and other new aquaculture enter- ease the logger's lot will actually take over bombings are another modern worry. We prises, some already underway. At Japan's much of the work, further axing forest em- handle everything from coal mines to sub- experimental offshore Oita Ranch, for in- ployment. According to current projections, marines and the space shuttle." stance, "wranglers" in fishing boats herd sea in fact, logging jobs will decline 13.6 percent 2. DATABASE MANAGERS. Databases- bream. Hatched in one set of onshore tanks in the next five years. collections of facts, figures, records, proc- and matured in another, the young bream 10. FAST-FOOD RESTAURANT WORKERS. esses, names, addresses, and other infor- put on weight grazing in seabed pastures, With two-job couples and careerist singles mation stored in computers— have become where they learn to swim to a feeding station becoming the norm, fast-food restaurants the nervous systems of many large compa- that emits a characteristic noise. When they should multiply. Jobs in such quickie eater- nies. According to Bob Weinstein, author of are ready for the table, the same noise sum- ies, however, are apt to decline because the 140 High-Tech Careers (Collier Books-Mac- mons the unsuspecting fish to harvest. hand that broils your burger or that fries your millan), database managers are essentially Meanwhile, University of California at Santa pullet will be made of aluminum. information gardeners: They prune and thin Cruz marine biologists have built an exper- their data "gardens," discarding outdated imental sea farm in San Francisco Bay. They TEN CAREERS ON THE RISE information, adding new data, and updating produce a single crop: kelp covered with 1, FIRE-PROTECTION ENGINEERS. "We can the collection. Typically, the database man- herring eggs, an Asian delicacy. Harvested now predict mathematically what will hap- ager has at least a bachelor's degree in lib- within hours of the egg laying, the kelp is pen if there is a fire or explosion at a certain eral arts, computer science, or library sci- pickled in brine and dried to form a caviar- site and then design more efficient safe- ence; or an MBA, with expertise in computer coated cracker. Most of the crop goes to Ja- guards. Because of these new technolo- systems and programming. Besides work- pan, where it sells for $8 to $20 a pound. gies, fire-protection engineering is coming ing for corporations, database specialists Other projected aquaculture jobs include into its own," says David Lucht, director of also find jobs with independent database krill herder, lobster farmer, and salmon the Center for Firesafety Studies, at Worces- services that provide over-the-phone infor- rancher. Jobs in aquatic agriculture are al- ter Polytechnic Institute. He says the two mation for a fee. Others work for museums, ready available far from the sea, on the Mid- dle West's increasingly common and suc- cessful catfish farms. 4. LASER TECHNOLOGISTS. Laser tech- nology, according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, is among the fastest grow- ing fields, with about 30,000 new techni- cians needed in the next five years alone. Many additional jobs will open up for laser scientists, engineers, and other specialists. Uses for lasers range from microsurgery to industrial cutting tools, telephone commu- nications, and the Reagan administration's star-wars project. And future computers may be based on photons rather than electrons, encoding information on flashes of laser light. According to Kenneth Teegarden, director of the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, the shortage of workers in this field —200 new engineers and 3,500 new technicians are needed each year— could cripple America's ability to compete in fields '" " ' as diverse as robotics, automated manufac- " " 'lists* '4111 turing, communications, and defense. Tech- , nological futurists predict that what electric- ity has been to the twentieth century, the laser will be to the twenty-first. Thus, they say, the field will spawn a wide range of specialities. For instance, Cetron predicts that 40,000 new fiberoptic technicians will be needed by 1990 mm to handle the fiberoptic testing equipment that some manufacturers already use to check aircraft parts for alignment. In addi- tion, automated factories will need some 200,000 inspectors to test equipment that "I find it very difficult not to be concerned uses fiberoptic sensors. when every scientist in research makes for the front door. 5. SPACE TECHNOLOGISTS. Space travel is becoming so routine that even senators and teachers will soon be shuttling into orbit. professional humanists. Arthur D. Little vice increase 97 percent by 1995. According to There are plans afoot for a permanent space president Alma Triner, for instance, predicts the Electronics Industries Association, we'll station, bases on the moon, and orbiting the proliferation of ethicists who will work in require armies of domestic digitechnicians factories. One drug company, Johnson & such institutions as hospitals, helping phy- just to maintain all the circuitry in our digital Johnson, has announced plans to orbit a sicians and families decide when to allow TVs, stereos, and videocassette recorders. 1.5 vaccine-manufacturing robot satellite. Ac- terminally ill patients to die. They also will And Cetron envisions the need for some cording to Arthur D. Little space engineer work for government agencies and for busi- million roboticists in a decade. Peter Glaser, all the recent out-of-this-world nesses, helping firms decide when duty to 8. EDUCATIONISTS. In a world that runs on activity will generate a need for a new spe- stockholders must be superseded by duty drastically changing, ever more complex cialty, space doctor, not only to care for as- to society. Professional networkers will help skills, tomorrow's worker will continually be tronauts but also to work in orbiting hospi- set up computer contact between people returning to school for retraining. Such a tals, treating burn victims, heart patients, and who have similar interests or information to learning society will require educationists. others who can benefit from a zero-gravity share, says May Harding, director of the Public schools will become more diverse, environment. Robert Bruce, of Claremont Center for the Study of Alternative Futures, with students choosing schools that match Graduate School, foresees such new jobs at Rhodes College, in Memphis. She also their abilities and preferences. Teachers' as spacelab technician and space re- anticipates professional listeners to offset status— and pay—will rise as computers searcher. Educational administration pro- high-tech society's loneliness and to facili- begin to handle routine drills, enabling hu- supervisors of fessor John Hoyle, who is Texas A&M Uni- tate problem solving — in businesses, for in- man instructors to function as versity's resident futurist, believes that as stance—when relationships break down each student's individual program of learn- humanity's occupation of the void begins in because opponents do not truly hear each ing. Although Department of Labor projec- earnest, jobs will open up for space con- other. According to Harding, other new spe- tions call for a 37 percent increase in the struction workers. The University of Ver- cialties might include community builders need for elementary-school teachers by mont's Lawrence Simmons says that an- (needed as more people "telecommute" from 1995, tomorrow's public-school teachers, other extraterrestrial pro will be the space home offices), job-sharing planners, home- backed up by computer aides, may actually production technician, skilled in managing office designers, intercultural managers be fewer in number. Except in engineering, orbiting factories. Also needed, of course, (helping diverse peoples interact amiably in university teaching jobs already are project- will be zero-gravity engineers to design tomorrow's global society), and values fore- ed to decline. But the learning society will space equipment ranging from solar collec- casters (helping industry anticipate shifts in create new educationist jobs, including writ- tors and spacetugs to the Orbiting Hilton. people's desires and concerns). ers who will prepare computer videodisk 6. PROFESSIONAL HUMANISTS. No matter 7. DIGITECHNICIANS. With digital technol- lessons for students, and televideo teach- how dominated by technology society be- ogy busily transforming everything from ers, who will offer interactive TV courses. And comes, "Have you hugged your computer banking to microwave ovens, the need for corporations will hire battalions of teachers today?" is unlikely ever to be a serious in- people to maintain all the equipment can only to handle their in-company education pro- junction. In fact, to offset technology's steril- go up. For instance, government projections grams, already the fastest growing segment ity, tomorrow's society will require a cadre of call for computer service technician jobs to of education. 9. GERIATRICIANS. In graying America, the average age rises annually, and the number of senior citizens grows constantly. In 1979, for instance, there were 18.9 retirees for every 100 workers. But by 2030 that percentage should virtually double. In light of the facts, Cetron projects the need for 700,000 ger- iatric social workers and another 300,000 geriatric technicians, trained to outfit the el- derly with hearing aids, electronic wheel- chairs, and other technologies to help them get around. Still others predict jobs for ger- iatric engineers, who will specialize in the design, installation, and maintenance of synthetic organs, joints, and limbs. 10. ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE ENGI- NEERS. The country is already suffering from an acute shortage of supercomputer engi- neers to work with electronic megabrains. For instance, there's a dearth of compiler writers, who create programs enabling computers to "talk" to ordinary mainframes. Also needed are parallel-processing engi- neers to design computers that chew away at all facets of a problem simultaneously. Fi- nally, industry projections call for 50,000 ar- tificial-intelligence experts by 1990. These computer specialists, who study human in- telligence and invent ways of simulating it in silicon, will create machines with vast flexi- bility and scope. Says one Arthur D. Little engineer, "Some of these machines will ratiocinate their way into intellectual thickets and brier patches. When they get stuck, they may need an- other specialist— a computer psycholo- gist—to help them out. "DO '•The patterns portrayed a number system. An orange disc with a triangle in the center stood for zero.V orange disc with a I. W. Whiteside may be white triangle in the eighty-three years old, center stood for zero, his vision dim, but as for instance, any white far as he's concerned, figure stood for one, he can stili see the ob- and rectangles of blue vious, in this case the or red signified the varied patterns of an number two. "I had al- alien code. concluded that "Sharon's UFO ready if anyone were trying code," named foi Whiteside's grand to give us a code," Whiteside comments, daughter Sharon, re- digits zero to nine portedly arrived un- "the would be the best bidden on the night of place to begin." May 2, 1981. Sharon, Though bizarre, then age nine, was Whiteside's tale has paying a visit for the a vote of night. She had just already won confidence from J. Al- gone to bed across len Hynek, ufology's the, room from her grandfather when she leading scientist, now noticed a peculiar residing in Scotts- dale, Arizona. "Mr. pattern of lights. stable, As Whiteside re- Whiteside is a intelligent man," Hy- calls, Sharon said, says, "and there "Look, there are pretty nek is no doubt of his hon- lights on the wall." what he saw." I sure is describing exactly "I just told her to go to slei am he old friend of Whiteside's son-in-law, a con- voice dissolving into a chuckle, as it often does. "But she But Hynek, an servative Chicago attorney, does not buy the idea of an ex- persisted, so I turned to look." the Whiteside, a former Bell Labs communications engineer traterrestrial code. "I have to put this incident down to to psychic phe- from Glenview, Illinois, was amazed to see a white, perfectly paranormal," Hynek says. "It seems related poltergeists, that sort of thing." formed trapezoid. It flashed slowly four times, he says, and nomena, and scientist James then rotated slightly. After a while, he adds, the light shifted Others voice greater doubts. Says space, the explanation to the bookcase {shown next to Whiteside, above), forming E, Oberg, a noted debunkerof UFOs, "It isn't discs two inches across. "The discs formed five patterns, I doubt so much as the report." incident merits action. "What all beautifully colored, like jewelry," Whiteside notes. "Each Whiteside himself feels the stations all pattern was repeated four times." we need," he believes, "is an organization with night. NASA To the former engineer, a pattern could only be a mes- over the world to flash lights in this code at attract UFOs and begin sage. And thanks to "Sharon's photographic memory," he would be perfect for it. They might they could give says, he managed to record literally dozens of patterns, to talk with them. Just think what wonders composed not only of trapezoids and discs, but also trian- us if communication occurred." and an inquiry from gles, rectangles, and squares. Despite several letters from Whiteside interest After weeks of interpretation, Whiteside had his conclu- his local congressman, though, NASA has shown no sion; The patterns portrayed a simple number system. An in such a program.—OWEN DAVES 83 " " " " " " site, behind the barber shop. and orange powder called "One woman has already pay-loo-ah, used to bring come all the way from Texas Traditional cultures around down fever. And finally, offi- to visit the site," Miller en- the world still prize folk cials report that Mexican- thuses, "and a lot of the Star remedies more highly than a American children living in Trek far] clubs will be visiting trip to the doctor. But accord- Colorado, California, Michi- "ere. They wear full uniforms, ing to Florida epidemiologist gan, and Wisconsin have ncluding phasers, and spit- Jeffrey Sacks, who published been poisoned, sometimes shine boots." a report on folk-remedy to the point of death, by But despite the potential death, many of these home azarcon, an orange powder for profit, Betty Lowe, the remedies contain danger- that eases diarrhea— I and sole Republican on the city ously high, sometimes fatal, often contains 70 to 90 council, thinks the entire plan amounts of lead. percent lead. is a "wild, liberal, hare- In one recent case, for "The danger with contami- brained scheme" that could example, the death of a nine- nated folk remedies," says turn Riverside into a cheap month old Gainesville, Flor- Sacks, "is that they are often "tourist trap" and a haven for ida, boy baffled investigators used for the very symp- assorted "weirdos." until the parents, immigrants toms—vomiting, diarrhea, And Paramount Pictures, from India, handed over constipation, and abdominal which owns the rights to three home medicines. All pain—that indicate lead Sfar Trek, has warned the contained lead, with the poisoning."—Rob MacGregor town against erecting a highest amount in a brownish and Trish Janeshutz The tiny town of Riverside, statue of Captain Kirk. Miller, powder called ghasard. Iowa, population 826, has nonetheless, maintains his Mixed with water and honey, "All progress is based upon a declared itself the future resolve and stands firm. "The this "tonic" had been given universal innate desire on birthplace of Captain James opinion here right now," he to the infant daily. the part of every organism to T. Kirk. says, "is to call Paramount's In yet another case, 24 live beyond its income. In a sense, the idea comes bluff and see what they Vietnamese children living in —Samuel Butler from Star Trek's creator, da"— Eric Mishara Minnesota had dangerously Gene Roddenberry, himself. high levels, of lead in their "Man has never understood While his dreaming up char- "I've always wanted to be a blood; at the root of their how anthropomorphic he is. acters, Roddenberry de- machine. trouble were various home —Johahn Wolfgang von scribed a small town in Iowa —Andy Warhol remedies, including a red Goethe as the third millennium birth- place of a fictional starship " 'Time' has ceased, 'space' captain. Picking up on that has vanished. We now live theme, City Councilman and in a global village ... a "Trekkie" Steve Miller de- simultaneous happening. cided that constructing Kirk's —Alfred North Whitehead birthplace in his own home- town of Riverside would "With word and deed we attract tourists and boost the insert ourselves into the local economy. human world, and this Toward that end, the local insertion is like a second community club plans to birth. erect' a statue of Kirk and has —Hannah Arendt changed the name of its annual summer festival to "What is called science Trekfest. The town is also today consists of a selling where the trek begins haphazard heap of T-shirts and buttons, as information, united by well as vials of "Captain Kirk nothing. Dirt" from the future birth —Lev Tolstoy 84 QMNI " - s West, however, arguesthat the person might feel re- the erosion of the sphinx is sponsible for its formation in unique, a vestige of prepyr- the. first place. The technique, amid days— Carol Fletcher he adds, encourages pa- tients to harbor unrealistic' ex- "Look for the other half who pectations about the possi- walks beside you and is what bility of a cure. And the you aren't." marketing of the method "is ^Antonio Machado in all likelihood a soft-core type of quackery." "Between living and But Simonton disagrees. dreaming there is a third "Positive expectancy has thing. Guess what. a desirable impact on the —Antonio Machado quality of life and on the course of the disease," he says. "The supportive litera- ture is much stronger than implied by the critics. What is A few years back Texas needed is more funding for physician O. Car! Simonton research in this important vious wear, including two- made the extraordinary claim field."— D.Scott Rogo foot-deep channels cutting that cancer could be con- through its walls, to water trolled, even cured, through "Experience does not ever The half-lion, half-man rather than wind. meditation. His program, err, it is only your judgment monster known as the sphinx The water, West believes, now available to patients that errs in promising itself was not among the creatures came from the great floods, around the country, is based ' results that are not caused by crowding Noah's ark. But "if that's so," he adds, "then on the notion that concentra- . your experiments.'' according to writer Anthony Egyptian civilization could be tion will give the immune —Leonardo o West, the famous stone a lot older than we think. In system the crucial boost it sculpture at Giza could b.e a fact, if knowledge from needs to fend off infection "And if there had been more survivor of the great floods this civilization survived the and disease. of the world, they would " that ravaged Egypt between floods, it could explain why Recently, however, hema- have reached it. 15,000 and 10,000 B.C. If Egyptian culture later blos- tologist and oncologist this theory is correct, adds somed so rapidly. "Egypt Wallace I. Sampson has West, author of The Travelers might not have been a devel- challenged the Simonton re- Key to Ancient Egypt, then opment," West notes, "but search, contending that scholars will have to rewrite a legacy." there's no physiological way Egyptian history as we know This theory, however, is to explain the claims. There it today. disputed by University of isn't much solid evidence It has long been assumed, Louisville geologist K. Lai linking cancer to the immune West explains, that the pha- Gauri, who says that the system, Sampson declares, raoh Chephreh built the devastating water came not and it is thus "highly unlikely sphinx around 2700 B.C., right from the floods but from that trying to boost the im- around the time he con- morning-dew. "When the mune system through vague, structed the second pyramid. sphinx cools at night," Gauri hypothesized mechanisms Yet that date has puzzled explains, "atmospheric starting with the mind would observers, who note that the moisture condenses on its be successful." sculpture literally looks surface, dissolving salts Moreover, Sampson says, older than the pyramids sur- in the stone. At sunrise, the the Simonton procedure rounding it. To explain the moisture evaporates and the makes the patient feel guilty seeming contradiction, in fact, salts crystallize, creating about his or her disease; if scientists have recently pressure that disintegrates a person is capable of curing attributed the sphinx's ob- the rock." an illness, he notes, then " " keys, mountain sheep, seals, experiments were a success. the air," Lagle says, "A con- South American snapping According to biomedical tainer of air freshener on Today's meteorologists use turtles, and humans. engineer and neuroseientist the other side of the bathroom a network of computers Samples from the last Steve Baumann, researchers had crashed to the floor." and satellites to predict hurri- three varieties, Wimsatt points implanted microelectrodes An even more startling in- canes, earthquakes, and or- out, are not easily accessible into nerve cells from giant sea cident occurred the last dinary storms. But according in New Mexico. But word of slugs. Then they took the day of the experiments, as to seventy-year-old Gordon his studies has circulated. cells and hooked them to an Baumann, Lagle, and Resch Wimsatt, an ancient Apache The Alaskan government sent amplifier that monitored prepared to leave the lab. technique based on the him 350 pounds of seal electrical output. The three were walking changing patterns of bear fat blubber, and the El Paso, Using her PK ability, Bau- toward the end of a confer- may be more accurate than Texas, zoo mailed him some mann says, Tina actually ence table that held several this arsenal of technology. fat from a snapping turtle managed to slow down the objects, including a nine- Wimsatt, a resident of New killed by its mate. The hu- firing pattern of the cells. "We inch-long wrench. "The next Mexico's Sacramento Moun- man? An El Paso resident didn't pick up a signal from thing we knew we heard a tains, learned about Apache who donated some fat re- it for an interval of twenty- loud crash in the next room," weather forecasting some moved during surgery follow- three seconds," he says. Lagle reports. To get there 50 years ago, after befriend- ing an auto accident. "Normally it would emit a sig- we had to walk down a ing an Indian game warden The man calls every once nal every second or two. hall and turn right. When we whose ancestors had filled in a while, Wimsatt adds, Further evidence of Tina's arrived, there was the wrench translucent bear bladders just to see how his fat's PK ability comes from Jean- that had just been on the with fat. The fat changed doing.—Polly Summar nie Lagle, who followed table in front of us." configuration, the warden Tina around during her four Nonetheless, sociologist claimed, with the ferocious "Insects,, why cry? We all go days of tests at the lab. To Marcello Truzzi, director onslaught of hurricanes, that way. make sure she had Tina of the Center for Scientific the turbulence of earth- —Issa under observation at all times, Anomalies Research, is quakes, and the gentle Lagle, a clinical psychologist skeptical. "There are two shower of a summer's day. with the Psychical Research issues here, the psychoklne'tic Curious, Wimsatt decided Foundation, in Chapel Hill, stuff and the effects on the to fill a glass jar with bear When objects began flying even trailed the youngster into cells," he says. "When these fat and test the technique around Tina Resch's Colum- the bathroom. "I was holding people are ready to docu- himself. Today, some 50 bus, Ohio, home last year, onto Tina, and all of a sudden ment and replicate their years later, he has found pat- some psychic investigators there, was a noise, and a research, I'll be delighted to terns for the range of atmos- claimed the teenager was sickening, sweet smell filled rev.ew it —Sherry Baker pheric and geological demonstrating strong psy- events: Volcanoes, for in- chokinetic (PK) ability (see stance, cause the fat to form Antimatter, April 1985). a cone. And nuclear explo- But when a videotaped TV sions literally cause the fat to segment showed Tina pulling take on the shape of a mush- the cord of a "flying" lamp, room cloud. skeptics insisted she was In fact, Wimsatt says he nothing more than a sleight- has accurately predicted not of-hand trickster, only twisters and hurricanes, So to prove her validity, but also more than 400 Tina (right) has recently been earthquakes, including those participating in controlled that accompanied Mount experiments at a lab near St. Helens's volcanic eruption. Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And his research, based Though the lab insists it on readings of 200 jars stored remain anonymous (it is afraid on hiswindowsill, indicates of scaring away grant money that the technique works with for traditional research), one fat from chickens, wild tur- of its scientists says the 86 OMNI beat-up wooden desks. Their mission is to ware for export to the American market. CHINA create a new generation of Chinese com- Computerland has won tentative approval puter technology. to open the country's first retail computer CONTINUED FROM PAGE 38 Out of labs like this the Chinese hope to stores. And IBM is gearing up for a major apportionment has been done, but the bring in a new age of technology. To enter entry into the Chinese marketplace. question of how to share such limited re- that golden era, the government has reor- And there are other signs of rapid change sources as tools or animals remains unan- dered its scientific priorities. Previously, al- in a nation notorious for its centuries-old ties swered. The numbers of people involved most all China's scientific resources were to elegant tradition: • make it a complicated scheduling problem. concentrated on a .handful of world-class Academic scientists who want to study ob- In some farm communities a microcomputer projects: building a manned space pro- scure subjects have been given more free- helps decide who gets to use the water buf- gram, for instance. Now, according to Wu dom to proceed into the murk, even when falo on Wednesday, for example. The same Xing, a spokesman for the State Science and the immediate payoff isn't evident. Recently, machines also aid in coordinating the plow- Technology Commission, "We will empha- for example, a group of researchers began ing and planting of rice-paddy fields. size applied rather than basic research, mi- to publish materials on so-called fuzzy While some villages are organizing their crocomputers rather than mainframes, soft- mathematics, an esoteric science similar to lives with a personal computer, many parts ware rather than hardware. This will make artificial intelligence. Officially, the govern- of China are still overwhelmingly poor and advanced technology more widely available ment has endorsed the right of scientists, backward. When Deng Xiaoping visited his and more useful." not bureaucrats, to determine the course of native Sichuan province, considered one of Another part of the plan is to import ad- future scientific inquiry. the more forward looking, he was moved to vanced equipment and to seek out foreign • Hundreds of new periodicals have begun tears as he watched peasants working the partners to bring in new technologies. In the to appear within the last few years, some de- rice fields with the same wooden plows that last two years, computer firms like Bur- voted to such once-taboo topics as UFOs. had been used for centuries. roughs, Wang, Hewlett-Packard, and Gould • Military researchers have begun to go to Even in the more sophisticated urban have all made multimillion-dollar joint-ven- work on civilian needs. Computer designers areas, some backwardness prevails. Any- ture arrangements to establish their own who work for the military, for example, are body familiar with American research facili- computer factories in China. now employed in civilian factories, where ties would be astounded on visiting the Bei- Although Chinese scientists' skills at en- they work as consultants. jing Institute of Electronic Technique gineering hardware surpass their software •Spending for research and development Application, the laboratory where China's first capabilities, last summer a surprising new has risen from 0.7 percent of the gross na- IBM-compatible personal computer, the venture, called the Shanghai Software Con- tional product to 1 percent this year. And the Great Wall 100, was developed. A visitor sortium, was formed. With joint headquar- rate is due to continue its steady rise, to 1.2 walks up many dark and narrow stairways ters in Shanghai, China's biggest city, and percent, next year. to find some of China's top computer sci- San Jose, California, the company's 30 Chi- •Chinese scientists are suddenly being entists at work. Their research area is mini- nese programmers will write IBM-, Apple-, treated like superstars, lionized in maga- mally lit by afew bare lightbulbs shining over and Tandy-compatible applications soft- zines and on television. Public opinion even laid claim to the exploits of An Wang, foun- der of the Wang Laboratories computer company in Massachusetts, because he was born in Shanghai. The fact that he is a bil- lionaire American capitalist doesn't seem to have dimmed his glory. • Native-born researchers who now live abroad are encouraged to return to their motherland to visit or teach. Every year, about 100 to 200 answer the call. Often, they are given a hero's welcome, complete with a personal audience with Deng Xiaoping or other state leaders. But scientists alone, experts in China told me, will not be able to pull the country out of the past. One such expert is Li Paoheu, the thoughtful and energetic spokesman for the Chinese Future Society, a man sometimes considered the Alvin Toffler of his country. During a remarkably candid conversation in the bar of the Chinese Journalists' Associa- tion, he said recent structural changes and policy shifts weren't enough. And he out- lined an even more radical set of changes that he said would have to take place: As- semble teams of specialists to work- on breakthrough projects; then when they are finished, redeploy them for other projects, Li suggested. Improve communication be- tween people working in the same field. Get rid of high-ranking officials who have achieved their positions more from political clout than technical competence. Li propounds a touch of what some of his ^rwm^ countrymen would still consider heresy: a Chinese version of a free-market economy. Although he believes that Chinese workers are motivated more by patriotism than by material incentives, he applauds a recent SELL PART-TIME reform that allows professors to serve as paid consultants to industry. And he supports an- other reform that encourages research insti- tutes to commercialize their findings— in MAKE FULL-TIME other words, to sell, just as Western com- panies do, on the open market. The state's motive is to reduce its subsi- dies to the country's 2,200 scientific insti- INCOME! tutes. By forcing them to become indepen- My first Pace order dent, the government hopes it will cut down on the institutes' bloated internal bureaucra- earned me $7,700 . . . plus the cies and encourage them to develop in- financial security of my own business. come-producing relationships with agricul- Tedd Mainwaring's Own Story. ture and industry. So far, nearly 100 research organizations have succeeded in becoming When 1 was working in the oil fields, I used to get Seamless Spray did the job. I made $7,700 and depressed about being paid by the hour and today my family and I enjoy a life we never thought fully independent. But the process is ago- constantly struggling to feed my family while others possible . . . Thanks to Pace! nizingly slow, and the results raise some un- were striking it rich. Not being able to control my Mail Today for FREE FACTS. expected problems. own destiny really got to me. Earn big money selling part-time like Tedd The Electronics Techniques Institute, in the One day I saw a Pace ad about a man who Mainwaring! Enjoy the financial security and earned $4,154.46 on just one Seamless Spray city of Hofei, for instance, achieved financial independence of your own business! Our order—without investing a penny of his own. I independence with relative ease early in field-tested sales kit provides all the know how you wrote for Free Information. And am I glad I did. need. No investment required ... No training. Start 1984 For the first time, its engineers and Becoming a Pace DeaJer was the best move I ever making $1000 sale even made. a — up to $7700 and technicians were allowed to elect their own more. Send for FREE facts. No obligation. What impressed me from the start was the director and choose their own research proj- unlimited number of Seamless Spray prospects. MAIL TODAY FOR FREE SALES KIT ects. After developing computer software for Schools, Hospitals and Commercial buildings of all the mining industry, the institute soon had so types didn't have any choice but to spend a small Pace Products, Inc., Dent.0M-985 ' Quality Plaza, 112th & College Blvd. much cash coming in that it paid off all its fortune to renew their leaking roofs. I P.O. Box 10925, Overland Park, Ks. 66210 I offer choice. I Thanks to Pace, can them a can || debts, hired ten new engineers, and began WITHOUT OBLIGATION rush me the FREE SALES KIT renew their roofs and save them a fortune! The I saving money for future research. that tells how to have own Pace Business. No I fact that General Motors, Holiday Inns and me my salesman will call. "... But with its success came political com- American Airlines were satisfied Pace customers I was a real sales clincher! plications. Local tax collectors—taking ad- | Print Name My first few calls were not big successes—tout vantage of unclear tax laws—began to bleed Address then it happened! My first sale. It was to renew a the institute of all its income, arguing that its ite Zip school roof that had been leaking for 25 years. ,: newer software programs were really only variations of the same basic product and therefore should be taxed with the higher rate for mass-produced commodities rather than the rate for scientific research. The institute, reported one Chinese newspaper, was driv- FOR en to the "brink of collapse" by the pressures of the jealous local tax authorities. As it gropes its way into the Information UIURE REFrT£rCE Age, China has been no more successful at solving another problem that plagues the computer industry: uniform standards. De- spite having a strong, centralized state that Moving? We need 4-6 weeks onnrui sets standards for many other facets of life, notice of a change of address. Fill RO. Box 5700, Bergenfield, NJ. 07621 the Chinese have to deal with dozens of in the attached form. conflicting and incompatible technologies. Please check the appropriate box below; Take the task of Chinese-character proc- New Subscription or Renewal? Payment must accompany order essing, the equivalent of our word process- One year of Omni is$24 in the U.S. New Subscription Renewal ing. The Chinese language is unbelievably $34 in Canada and overseas. D Please remove my name from your complex. While our typewriters have a 26- Please enclose a check or money mailing list. This is a change of oddress, my new letter keyboard, a standard Chinese type- order for the appropriate amount address is below. writer keyboard has 2,000 keys. And those 6-8 for delivery and allow weeks represent only the most frequently used Listing/Unlisting Service? Omni characters. True literacy requires between makes the names and addresses 5,000 and 10,000 characters. And each character is up of as as 20 dif- of its subscribers available to other made many publications and outside com- ferent strokes, or lines. To date, scientists have devised some 200 different software panies. The publications and systems for character processing, none of companies selected are carefully which comes close to the efficiency of Eng- for their acceptability screened lish language word processing. and quality of their offers. If you Where they are available, computers often Attach mailing label would like your name removed stand idle at night simply because those who from this mailing list please check need them can't obtain authorization for after- the appropriate box on the hours use. To an impatient generation of coupon. young Chinese— especially those trained in the West and accustomed to 24-hour avail- — amidst the country's first au- ability—such obstacles seem like another of ment: The tape could be shown, but only to puters. Here, of skyscrapers, blue- the old guard's ploys to keep knowledge and small groups of intellectuals. And it would be thentic skyline 50-story out, blasting power out of the hands of intellectuals and followed by a critique of the ideas it pre- jeaned factory workers hang scientists. sented that countered Marxism. their cassette recorders and smoking Marl- installed com- For guidance in facing such problems, What lay behind the videotape debate is boros. The town has more in China, many Chinese intellectuals have turned to vestigial opposition to Western technology puters per capita than any other university will soon the writings of Alvin Toffler. A translated and the alien technology that accompanies and an experimental aging loyal- open. Its goal is to do for Shenzhen what and edited—edition of his 1980 bestseller, it. The harshest critics are Mao did for Silicon Valley. The Third Wave, is now circulating widely in ists and the millions of younger party mem- Stanford once future look? During one of China. His faith in technology's ability to al- bers who gained influence during the Cul- How does this Lee, chief executive low a developing country to leap over cen- tural Revolution. As recently as last year, his trips to China, Ed components turies of industrial, second-wave develop- leftist editorials argued that China's open- officer of Pro-log, a computer visited both Shenzhen and ment and move right into a third-wave era of door policy let in "spiritual pollution" from the manufacturer, After high technology has been enthusiastically West. And in scenes reminiscent of the Cul- more traditional Chinese factories. government-run' endorsed by Premier Zhao Ziyang. The Pre- tural Revolution, organized street gangs were completing one tour of a discovered mier has convened a series of national con- cutting off the stylish hairdos of young factory, a member of his group left his briefcase behind and went ferences to promote a "new industrial revo- women emulating Western fashions. that he had the plant to lution." To many back into Chinese academics retrieve it. As he and planners who stepped inside, the have found Marxist American noticed that BEING KNOWN AS A NUMBER employees, dogma incapable of factory who had been work- helping China move CAN BE AVERY PERSONAL THING ing frantically when swiftly and smoothly the tour went by, quit into the modern world, •"""•'" at their frenzied activity Toffler's theories seem Look, for example, the visitors had particularly enticing. JF 1222146 the individual once the door. "China's more tra- walked out Given the opportunity ditional development on the back label of your bottle of to visit a factory in strategies for both ru- the Beefeater Gin. If it were the one on Shenzhen where the ral and industrial areas left, it would tell you that your Beefeater have been tragically workers were assem- disappointing," says was distilled Thursday, January 7, 1982, bling boom boxes and for J. Pen- Toffler. "But in high under the supervision of Thomas radios C. technology, they see Bowman, Master Stillman, and that the ney, Lee made a point of slipping back into a possibility of distillation was approved personally the plant to see how achieving some of the by Mr Norman Burrough, a direct goals of industrializa- industrious the pro- descendant of our founder, before it was really tion without negative duction lines allowed to leave the distillery. the side effects, like over- were. This time urbanization. Does it help to know all this? Yes. That frantic work pace was on. "The metaphor I've number is a vital part of Beefeater Gin's still going reason, Lee used of 'waves of quality control. The is Unlike change' is not unfa- says, simple: Because the number is Mr. Bowman's miliar to the Chinese," the old factories, personal signature. And Mr. Burrough's, he notes in comment- where workers re- as well. ing on the voracious- ceive fixed salaries, ness with which some And any artist is at his best when he those in the special Chinese intellectuals has to sign his work. economic zone are have absorbed his paid by piecework. It's arrangement that concepts. "It's much 9 an well. like their own dialecti- BEEFEATER GIN seems to work England. cal view of history. The Crown Jewel of "They earn six times There's a real eco- the average wage in cuitural niche in China China." Lee says. that allows the third wave to snap neatly into For their part, the new leadership of Deng "You will find some criticism in other parts their reality." Xiaoping, Premier Zhao Ziyang," and the brain of China that what we are doing here is cap- A videotape documentary based on The trust around them argues that a high-tech italistic," says a young Shenzhen official. In- Third Wave is currently the rage in major cit- revolution can be managed so China can deed China's leaders are worried that inno- ies, offering many Chinese their first glimpses have Western-style technological growth and vation that comes too fast and too soon will of Silicon Valley's wondrous factories and still maintain its identity. To make any prog- create problems. ("They want rapid change products. A Tofflerian vocabulary has come ress, they know they must encourage some but without future shock," says Toffler.) into common Chinese parlance, and even measure of democracy, individuality, crea- "But China is supposed to be a revolu- conservative, Mao-suited Chinese officials tive diversity, and entrepreneurship. tionary country," explains the official. "What have been heard dropping such third-wave The future of China can best be foreseen we are doing here is making economic and Tofflerisms as "electronic cottage," "techno- in Shenzhen, a region described as a "spe- technical revolution. So I say to those critics, rebel," and "prosumer." cial economic zone" near Hong Kong. 'We are the real revolutionaries.' " Summing Not everyone is pleased with this new Shenzhen, an experiment in the free-market up this pragmatic approach to the techno- in Shenzhen wave. Initially, some Chinese officials wanted idea that was specifically designed to at- logical revolution, a manager the videotape banned. Finally, they agreed tract foreign investment and technology, quotes an old Chinese proverb: "If you're out to a compromise. Rumor holds that Deng produces such technology-intensive prod- to catch mice, it doesn't matter if you use a Xiaoping himself engineered the agree- ucts as Sony Trinitrons and Sinclair com- black cat or a white cat."DO — trified pipes, while the physicist fiddled with gests that a dowsing reaction does exist, fails WATER WITCHES the current. About 80 percent of Harvalik's to isolate the dowsing mechanism. And that guinea pigs detected the current whenever is what Harvalik has set out to locate. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 42 in it was at least 20 milliamperes. By wrapping parts of a dowser's body believes that "dowsing is a gift that you The test convinced Harvalik that dowsers magnetic shielding and then testing the shouldn't use for profit." detect changes in the earth's magnetic field, dowser's ability to locate a magnetic field, At least one scientist, physicist Zaboj V. caused by anything from seeping water to Harvalik says he's made a remarkable dis- Harvalik, has devoted considerable study to ores. But a second researcher questioned covery: If the area between the dowser's the traditional forms of dowsing. As a young this, saying that the reaction is in the dowser, seventh and twelfth ribs is magnetically man, he became fascinated with dowsing not the rod. shielded, the rod does not dip. Harvalik next when he saw a peasant in his native Czech- In 1971 Dr. Jan Merta, who was then a refined his experiments, asking dowsers to oslovakia wielding a rod. Later, teaching at physiologist at McGill University, in Mon- walk through a high-frequency radio beam the University of Missouri and serving as treal, set up a test of his own. By attaching with various parts of their anatomy shielded science adviser to the U.S. Army's Ad- strain gauges to a dowser's arms and to the by metal foil. He discovered that the dows- vanced Material Concepts Agency, he rod he was holding, Merta showed that a ing reaction ceased when the subject's kid- probed the phenomenon. Harvalik, now re- dowser's arm muscles contract half a sec- ney area was shielded. Eventually, Harvalik tired and living in Lorton, Virginia, believes ond before the rod dips. The experiment pinpointed what he believes is the dowsing the key to dowsing is electromagnetism. demonstrated that the dowsing reaction is sensor: the suprarenal glands, which sit atop In his earliest experiments, Harvalik found entirely in the dowser, while the instrument the kidneys and produce such hormones as that when he stepped across a live electrical everything from pliers to crossed kitchen adrenaline and noradrenaline. Harvalik wire, a dowsing rod in his hand twisted. The knives have been used—serves merely as Later, using metal headbands, dowsing research of a French physicist (Yves an indicator, like the needle on a dial. While pinpointed what he calls a second dowsing Rocard, director of the physics laboratory at most dowsers are picky about the particular sensor in the middle of the forehead. This the Ecole Normale Superieur, in Paris) had dowsing instrument they use, many realize sensor he has decided, is located near the near convinced Harvalik that water flowing un- that it is only a prop. pineal gland in the brain or perhaps the derground causes slight changes in the Some dowsers, he adds, dispense with pituitary gland. The pineal gland's precise earth's magnetic field, which in turn influ- rods and gadgets entirely. They rely on function has thus far eluded biologists. Some ences the dowsing rod. physical sensations, such as tingly palms. mystics associate it with the "third eye." As a test, Harvalik connected two buried Diviners have reported such reactions as a While Harvalik's experiments have not water pipes to batteries. The current flowing sensation of being tripped, chills, twitches, started a tidal wave, or even a ripple, in sci- through the pipes created a magnetic field a feeling like red-hot knives penetrating the ence, they do suggest that dowsing is based that rose or fell as he dialed the current's soles of their feet, convulsions, and wheez- in the physical world: electromagnetic ra- amperage up or down. Visitors to his Vir- ing. Some even say they throw up when they diation and certain glands. But his work as- ginia home found themselves holding a pass over a water vein. sumes that dowsing is a bona fide phenom- dowsing rod and marching across the elec- But Merta's demonstration, while it sug- enon. Recent controlled studies suggest that there's little validity to dowsers' claims of being able to intuit where water lies. Magician James Randi has repeatedly challenged dowsers to prove their abilities in a controlled setting. In 1979 he offered $10,000 to the diviner who could locate water running through a series of pipes planted underground for the purpose of the trial. En- gineers, surveyors, and a lawyer witnessed the proceedings, from the laying of the pipes to the testing of the dowsers. Of the four contestants who tried to trace the path, not one succeeded. Three years later, backed by a journalist and a millionaire, and adding $10,000 of his own money to the prize, Randi offered $1 20,000 to anyone able to produce the right results in a second dowsing con- test. Again, all 11 'of the participants failed. "Each one agreed to the terms of the trial ahead of time and considered them to be fair," Randi explains. 'Afterward, when they learned they weren't right, they offered a million excuses. 'Sunspots interfered,' one said. Another dowser claimed the problem was that Jupiter was in Sagittarius." Randi is not the only one to hold such trials. During a test held at Boston University sev- eral years ago, in 40 attempts, Sevigny lo- cated water only nine times. He disregarded his poor showing, saying that under serious conditions, he would have been successful. And what of the claims of hidden springs being discovered, the testimonials of satis- fied customers? Are these findings merely coincidental? Or is there a logical explana- tion for dowsers' results in the field? " I think that in most cases the dowser has — a pretty fair knowledge of the geology and strand outriggers and geophone distur- hydrology of an area, based on personal ex- THE bance sensors was dark, but the darkness perience," of ARK lights that says Ronald Tank, professor was deceptive. There were would CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51 geology at Lawrence University, in Apple- flood the area instantly like a sun if the ton, Wisconsin. Eugene Patten, chief of the calmly, "I want to thank you for explaining monitoring station to the north picked up groundwater branch of the U.S. Geological it all, Mr. Ringer. I feel a little foolish for a vertical disturbance on the chain link Survey, agrees. "Some dowsers are just having bothered you and your staff like here. Still, it was the best spot. He had con- good empirical hydrologists," he says. this." He made himself smile for the man. sidered penetrating 1 near the main gate, Although this may explain some of the 'That's quite all right." where the bridge and road accessed and success dowsers experience, it can't ac- That night, when he heard her breathing any sensors of that kind would have to stop count for the times linemen like Tom Harmon stop twice and found he could not awaken ten meters from them. But the bridge was have located buried conduits, or explain how her the second time without hurting her, he floodlit, the road would have microwave soldiers in Vietnam sniffed out land mines. called the heli-medic and had her flown to detectors, and there would be CCT cam- There may be a danger in shutting our minds the nearest teaching hospital seventy-five eras in all that light. to such mysteries. miles away. There, the doctors tested her, He slipped the starlight goggles on, and "Scientists ought to be alert to what other gave her medication, and watched her. the night turned green, the green ghost of people can teach us. You just can't discount They did not understand. They did not un- the fence in front of' him. From his utility practical experience because there isn't an derstand it any more than the first doctors belt he undipped the power cutters and accepted explanation for something," says had. They said so. It was a syndrome of the transmitter, knelt on the fence's cement Robert Brambl, a biochemist at the Univer- some kind, they said, and when he finally apron, and ignored the pain in his knee. sity of Minnesota. As an undergraduate, 20 left her in the hospital, his daughter was Reading the transmitter's face with his fin- years ago, Brambl spent summers working breathing normally again — but only be- gers, he found the button for the first well with a gas company's pipeline repair crew. cause their tubes, their medications, their and paused. The cutters trembled wildly An aging foreman taught him to locate bur- "intensive care" let her. in his right hand. He thought of See Chee. ied pipes using a dowser's L-rods. "I used When he pushed it, the detonation half the technique dozens of times to locate these He stood in front of the bedroom mirror. a kilometer away shook the earth under unmapped lines. Of course I had a few fail- In his left hand he held a laser-aimed him, screaming its way up through the ures, but most of the time it worked." Ruger carbine with silencer and folding geophone transducers in the fence to the As a gesture to open-mindedness, I vis- stock. In his right, a model 5-F "intruder monitoring station another kilometer away. ited the American Society of Dowsers head- flare" with six million lumens ready to go. To those monitors it would seem the perim- quarters and tried my hand at divining. Se- At his hip there was an old .357 Colt Py- eter fence was being assaulted simulta- vigny offered me one of his divining rods thon, along with a pair of Black and Decker neously at every point on its eight-klick cir- a plastic, V-shaped gizmo. He showed me power cutters and a 5.53 transmitter for cumference—an impossibility. Earthquake how to grasp the two ends of the V, palms the charges. He had given the .223 Ruger would be the first assumption, but within up, and then twist my wrists outward to bend carbine a matte-black finish. Everything seconds word of the oil-well explosion the plastic, tensing the rod. that might reflect light had been sprayed, would reach the station, and his diversion "There's a vein of water running under that and he had smeared catalog-ordered would be accepted. corner of the room—why don't you try dows- nightblack under his eyes, across his fore- As the ground shook, he sliced easily ing for it?" Sevigny asked. head, over his chin. Under his black com- through the chain link. Feeling not a little loony, I walked across bat fatigues, catalog ordered like every- He scrambled through, tearing his fa- the floor, bearing the dowsing rod like an thing else, he was wearing ninth-generation tigues. The earth glowed green in the gog- offering to the gods of zaniness. "Concen- Kevlar body armor and a heat-dissipating gles, and beyond the bare zone with the trate on the question you're asking the rod skin for infrared evasion. buried geophones— a miniature of what 'Where is the water vein?' " Sevigny said. I It took him forty-five minutes to make his once kept the two Berlins apart on the other found myself concentrating on what my old way from the oil wells to the zoo's perim- side of the world— he could see the fainter physics professor, a cantankerous Ala- eter. The moonlight, useful while he set the green ghost of the second fence, the bur- baman who had an impressive number of charges at the wells, was worthless in the ied sensors ending three meters from it. synonyms for asinine, would say. I crossed shadows of the wilderness zone. He had to keep the earth shaking under the room without a quiver from the rod. Setting the charges had gone smoothly, him for five seconds. His fingers found the "Dowsing is a gift, but not everyone who but it had taken thirty-six minutes, not fif- second button, and even as he began to has it knows it. You do need practice," Se- teen. The two-meter chain-link fences with run, jammed it in with all their strength. vigny said. "For now, let me lend you some single-strand outriggers weren't wired for Under him the geophones screamed, the of my power with the rod." disturbance, and the wire cutters had gone monitors got word of another explosion He grasped the left prong of the V with his through them like butter. What had de- within seconds, and he was through the left hand and had me grasp the right prong layed him was his own hands, fingers sensors, past them, only a meter now from with my right hand. Then he gripped my free shaping the charges, setting the caps and the second green fence. hand, completing some secret biocircuit. receivers. For fifteen years his hands had Locating most of the information had Like the cinematic Butch Cassidy and the touched nothing but software, feasibility been easy. The literature was there if you Sundance Kid, hands clasped in buddy- studies, monthlies, and proposals, not RDX knew where to look— in declassified Army hood as they leap from a high cliff to escape and Pentolites and lacing cord. field manuals, "survivalist" books and the posse, Sevigny and I marched across When he reached Zone One—the zoo's tapes, magazines and videotexts for law the floor. Near the room's far corner, the rod perimeter, the first fence— he stopped in enforcers and adventurers — all obtainable abruptly lurched in my hand. the shadows of an ancient eucalyptus to through catalogs. It felt as if something alive had jerked the catch his breath. The scent of the tree filled But before locating this information, there rod, like the strike of a 20-pound salmon. A him, burning. His body ached. He hadn't had been one important question: Which few steps farther, it straightened. Dead. I tried used it in twenty years— since the dim rac- security system did the zoo use? it again, on my own, and this time it arced quetball days of his youth. The equipment An acting assistant supervisor of oper- for me, too, although feebly, as if I'd hooked was like lead weights strung ail over him, ations for his firm, he had quietly called for only a sunfish. Still, it was unnerving. But then and he thought of younger men carrying a review of alternative security systems. I thought: it arcs because you tense your much more gear than this over the hills of Lists of testimonials for intrusion-detection arm muscles. No magic. long wars he had never been to. systems became available, and on the sixth And yet. . . DC1 The three-meter chain link with its six- day he had found the Los Angeles Zoo 94 OMNI — — — under "total geophone systems." landscape, and studied the tarmac path Daniel, Doctor." The door purred open. The central monitoring station had ra- [hat led past him to three other domes He could barely move his legs. The ad- dar, a heiipad for check-and-chase just thirty, sixty, and one hundred meters away. renaline made them wobbly, beyond his outside Zone One, and a Cesnna 0-7 Vul- He would wait five minutes. He was giddy, control, but he moved them, got inside, re- can intercept capability from a nearby air- had to make himself think. The vets, the moved the starlight goggles and put on field. The domes were state of the art: twin vets, they would go about their business the infrared ones now. skins of laminated mylar, twin alloy super- detonations or no detonations, fires or no In the goggles the world became hell. structures and insulation doubling as fires —and pressure mats, buried sensors Green ghosts gave way to grainy, burn- shields— all wired for intrusion detection. and invisible barrier detectors would beoff ing forms from nightmares. He was in a red Terrorists, contract operatives, crazies, or for forty-five minutes. jungle, the trees a rain forest reaching to- ceiling fifty heavy shapes . . . up, simple vandals— all had been factored into Now. ward a meters the system. But "intrusion" was not "sab- There were two figures approaching moving lazily through the trees, smaller otage." Like any high-security facility, this two vets in lab coats, two green creatures shapes flitting, gliding in the burning light, zoo used the proverbial two-man rule for with slithery green skin the color of cha- every living thing glowing with the fire of personnel on the ground. Pressure mats, meleons in the ambient light of the moon. its own heat. Slowly he unslung the matte- seismic sensors, and microwave eyes were Both men carried small bags, and the little black laser-aimed Ruger Mini with folding killed during vet and feeder hours, and the ground lights along the path lit up before stock and thick silencer and held it before hours were changed daily by computer. them to show the way. The two creatures him, marveling at the violence of his own The vet and feeder hours were the key. disappeared around the bend. shaking. How can you do this? himself think. If he had misjudged too much, or if the He ran awkwardly to the next dome, He made monitors failed to ignore random sensor slowing as he approached the door. There, He thought of his daughter, his daugh- phenomena during the explosions, or'if hands shaking, he installed the microre- ter's mother, and of himself. He was at the fence, the one that carried corder by the grill. Then he moved into the He scanned the red rain forest for the seen first. The ani- no sensors. It was only a physical barrier, shadows of a large pepper tree and waited, heavy shape he had there to buy time for an armed response mals he chose would have to be large, at force deployed to the point of penetration. least in intensive-care units; otherwise what He cut the fence, took a breath, strug- he did would have no meaning. An adult gled through, and began trotting toward bei shung weighed one-hundred-fifty kilos; the service road that glowed green fifteen they needed intensive care. ^He unslung the meters inside. Beyond the road he could Whatever it was, it wasn't there now. A see ghostly green landscaping writhing in matte-black laser-aimed sloth, a large primate, two primates mating from of wind, and there, in the dark, an infant clinging to its mother. the night gusts Ruger Mini with beyond the landscaping, towering domes You took her away, Lawrence Beckman. the same ghostly green. the folding stock and the Now she is dead. This is how it happens. He looked back once at the oil fires now thick silencer. He raised the Ruger's stock slowly to his lancing the sky and moved toward the shoulder, and there it was— as if waiting He held it before him, trees, the trees that looked so much like a the red shape stalking high in the trees jungle from someone's dream. marveling at the above him. At the edge of the landscaping, he froze. Trembling, he aimed. He aimed again, violence of his shaking.^ His head jerked up, his heart crashing the red dot of the laser clear on the body. suddenly like an animal in his chest. The He fired. He fired again. whurnp-whump-whump of helicopter As the heavy thing fell through the trees, blades filled the air above him, and he he turned in horror and ran. The pressure dropped to the ground, pressing his face mat just inside the door sensed him, the into the earth, his gear biting into him pain- listening to the rise and fall of the far sirens, door whispered open, and he was out free, fully, stupidly. He held his breath, and when the hammering of his heart, watching the sick, full of despair. There were eleven he finally opened his eyes he could see glow of the sky over the wells. bodies left—eieven. . . . there were no searchlights, and now the When at last the two figures appeared He ran through hell. sound was past, fading into the wilderness on the path, it was from the opposite di- The next dome held another rain forest, toward the flaming weils, replaced by the rection, and he saw they were a different a vision from an ancient Gustave Dore lith- drone of a single-engine aircraft and the pair. The new green creatures stopped at ograph, lost paradise, inferno. This one eerie ululation of distant sirens. the door of the dome. He did not breathe. teemed with miniature life but with nothing He got up, tasting dirt, and ran. He They spoke — one, then the other—their large enough. The rain forest hissed closed hugged the landscaping where geo- voices muffled. Then the door slid open, behind him-, and he fled. phones were worthless. He avoided ce- and they went inside. When the door slid Bernard, Robert Lyman. Cohen, Benja- ment, tarmac, handrails, posts— anything shut, he trotted stiffly from the shadows, min Daniel, Doctor. that might be wired with one of the five grabbed the recorder from its hiding place, In the third dome he found no primeval technologies all security systems used. He almost dropped it, and ran. forest but instead individual cells with cor- passed the first dome, running at a crouch, The tarmac path was dark here; the ridors he could run through, Plexiglas he ignoring the pain in his chest. ground lights were off. He knew there was could break, animals that couid not get He passed three domes, heading east, no one inside this dome. They might ap- away from him. There were enough ani- ignoring the pains everywhere. pear any minute, but at least he wouldn't mals here, predators, primates, all in spe- Stopping, confused, he checked the find someone already inside. As he slowed cial cells. Thank God. His work might be digital map on his watch, The domes were to a trot, he rewound the tape. done soon. Predators. Carnivores. identical. Those he chose had to be the At the door—the pressure mat asleep In the goggles he could see two animals right ones, or all was lost. under him — he hesitated, hands shaking, asleep together, their heat making one liv- The monkeys, he thought. The monkeys then pushed the access button by the fa- ing thing. The animals began to stir, wak- and the aviary. No. It was dome forty-four miliar grill. A tone sounded. Frantically he ing as if somehow aware. Something about the deer family. The visitor's brochure had started the tape, shoving it at the grill. them made him think of monkeys, though been clear enough. "Bernard, Robert Lyman," the tape said, he could not be sure. Wasn't it better not He moved to the nearest dome, staid, professional, and then a second to be? Wasn't it better to think only of red crouched in the darkness of the ghostly voice — flip, cockier: "Cohen, Benjamin fiery forms with faces from nightmares? 96 OMNI — — Wasn't this how it had been for millennia did, given events that followed, but he it, should have kept the goggles on, shot for men just like him? If the eyes were too would not be able to remember their them in the darkness, never used the little much like a child's, the face like an old shapes, their sounds. light. The feathers were nearly gone. The woman remembered, a wife, a brother, they It was the seventh dome he would re- head wobbled gently. The yellow raptor would never do it. But they had always done member—nightmare after nightmare, beak was mottled and flaking from some in and the dark talons were arthrit- it—the buttons, the bomb bays, the face- flashback after flashback, even the day- disease, less faces, the prey always "the enemy." light years later. Even as he entered it, he ically stiff on the limb. Something crawled Wasn't this how it had always been? understood somehow that this would be all over its face, the beak, the dry eyes Now there is a child who has neither the end of the killing, that he would leave or was this his imagination? world. it, that he would make his way across the Slowly he moved the light down the limb Nearly dropping the heat knife, he cut a service road to the eastern fences, pene- until he found the female. hole in the Plexiglas just large enough for trate them quickly, and the two remaining A little smaller, her coloring like the male's the barrel of the scope and silencer. Bile charges would cover him. despite what people believe, she sattrem- rose in his throat. This is how it happens. This is how. bling, alive but ill. Now there is a child who has neither As he entered the seventh dome—the Haliaeetus leucocephalus. world. one that would give the two children of He remembered the man saying it, He inserted the Ruger. He knelt. He China a home, that would keep his daugh- though he hadn't understood it then. squinted through the goggles at the red, ter on this earth with him— he felt thankful Leuco cephalus. The white head. He anyone. Like waking shapes, broad faces returning his that it held no jungle, no rain forest where knew that head as well as stare now, and he fired. he could feel wild, ancient blood racing everyone, he had lived with it every day of The report of the weapon was a sigh, through him and wonder why, why. This his waking life —the coins, the bills, the the kick a bullet in his shoulder, which he one held only cells, intensive-care cell after stamps, seals, clutch of arrows, e pluribus deserved, and the animal fell writhing to cell, and he was thankful. unum. This was, after all, the bird —the two the floor. It was screaming hideously. But as he entered it, he knew something predator— the one they had chosen He staggered back in terror, jamming the centuries before for the face of their nation . grow barrel in the Plexiglas, dropping it, back- . . that their children's children might ing up, backing up. Where had it come up knowing it every day of their waking from —the screaming? He had heard only lives ... in a world like this. silence in his dreams. Somehow he had Because Washington and San Diego and 6/te feathers forgotten that what he killed —the eleven, the others didn't have room—that was what the twelve— might howl at him or moan or were all gone; its head the man had said. cry or scream until the red, red heat of their Now there is a child who has neither wobbled gently; bodies faded at last into eternal night. world. But the animal that was screaming was its raptor beak mottled and This is how it happens. This is how. He thought of See Chee. He thought of not fading, and now its mate was up, flaking; its scrambling back in terror, just as he was himself, of his wife, her people, of wars and talons stiff with arthritis; away from the sound, from the smell of fear, the deaths of sons, of littered parks and and somehow he was firing. He had the something moved yellow moons, of the world and the mess Ruger up and aimed, and he was firing. they had made of it. He thought of the pan- across its face and eyesJ It took three rounds. The mate lay on the das last of all, and only then because he floor of the cage, made a single sound, understood what they meant, what it all and was still. meant. He saw it clearly, and as he aimed But it, too, continued to glow, and the he knew he would not be caught, that he anger of that light terrified him more. would make it into the eastern interzone, The screaming would not end. was wrong. The red shapes in the tall cages over the buried sensors there. That the What have you done? were birds, large birds. charges would go off like the Fourth of July, He felt little emotion now. There was work Was it the way they sat apart on the ar- that he would wander free in the wilder- to do. He had twenty minutes or all was tificial limb? Was it something he sensed ness for hours and make his way back to lost. He had calculated everything to the but could not see, something beyond the an empty house. That he would sit with his hundredths. goggles' red glare? Was it something that daughter before their living-room screen in He ran the tape again, and another dome whispered to him from the scales on their the months ahead and listen to the story admitted him, and he did it. legs, the feathers, the pointed tongues he of how the pandas found a home (the "ter- He shot—someone shot—what looked knew were in the darkness? rible coincidence" of it), that her breathing like a water buffalo, was unable to find its There were two of them, of course. Male would not stop again, that she would grow mate, found instead a wingless bird with and female. He removed the goggles and up, get married or not, have children, live long legs. He—someone—shot it quickly, waited for his eyes to adjust. They did not. on into a future where some people loved trying not to see it, imagining instead small There was no light here, only darkness, the and some did not, and where her own chil- countries, monsoons, rice paddies, bam- beginning and the end of all things. dren would have all the animals— old and boo thickets, and shadowed highlands. He could sense them only a few meters new—that the bright new sciences of their Someone shot a doglike thing that above him now. They were hunkered on world could make. howled at an invisible moon as it died, and the limb, not touching each other. He knew He saw it all clearly, and as he did, as a face leapt up behind his eyes —from this. He had seen this in the goggles. understood what he had become. that howling, from a park, from a moon— They're sick, he realized. When he shot them —when he saw their he made it stop, made it go away. He How could he kill them like this? How yellow beaks jerk up, eyes wide that it was thought of his daughter. He thought of his could he do it this way? at last over, the sickness and shame— he wife. Of the pandas, waiting. He took the small flashlight from his belt asked for their forgiveness, and the eagles He shot two nameless things in the last and aimed it where he knew they were. gave it, and he knew he was shooting them cells of that dome and was gone. When he saw the first bird, he froze. My out of a father's love. DO Later, he would remember entering the God. next two domes, but what he killed there This is how it happens. This is how. The poem on page 44 is translated from the if he killed anything — he would not re- As the beam of light struck the dying Aztec by Jerome Rothenberg, from Shaking the member. It would seem to him later that he bird, he knew he should never have done Pumpkin, Doubleday & Company, 1984. * The Comet is Coming! Let ASTRONOMY be your guide to Halley's Comet! Where were your you'll fly aboard Giotto,- Vega, celestial maps and charts. you intellectually and grandparents in 1910? No and Planet A as they fly to Each monthly issue of emotionally. You'll learn the matter where they were, Halley's Comet, learn what ASTRONOMY features chances are they heard about gases and molecules boil off articles about the awesome Halley's Comet — and on the celestial iceburg, study the wonders of the universe, some frosty morning in April pictures their robot eyes return fantastic color pictures of of 1910, saw it glistening from space, and read and nebulae and galaxies taken at against the stars. Now, 76 understand theories the biggest observatories on years later, Halley's Comet is planet Earth. back! With ASTRONOMY, you'll But catching the comet appreciate the significance of won't be as easy as it was in discoveries few other people 1910. Streetlights and city even begin to grasp. 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Toinette cracked off a square of Her- shey's chocolate and pointed to the maga- zine. "I want the leather bikini," she said. 'Al- ways, when I am a girl, my goddamn mother, she keep me in the goddamn corsets. She think my what-you-call, my shoulder blade stick out too much." Rice leaned back across her solid thighs and patted her bottom reassuringly. He felt wonderfully stupid; a week and a half of ob- sessive carnality had reduced him to a eu- phoric animal. "Forget your mother, baby. You're with me now. You want ze goddamn leather bikini, I get it for you." Toinette licked chocolate from her finger- tips. "Tomorrow we go out to the cottage, okay man? We dress up like the peasants and we make love in the hedges just like noble savages." Rice hesitated. His weekend furlough to Paris had stretched into a week and a half; by now security would be looking for him. To hell with them, he thought. "Great," he said. "I'll phone us up a picnic iunch. Foie gras ." and truffles, maybe some terrapin . . Toinette pouted. "I want the modern food. The pizza and burritos and the chicken fried." When Rice shrugged, she threw her arms his love Rice'?" around neck. "You me : "Love you? Baby, I love the very idea of you." He was drunk on history out of control, careening under him like some great black motorcycle of the imagination. When he thought of Paris, take-out quiche-to-go stores springing up where guillotines might have been, a six-year-old Napoleon munching Dubble Bubble in Corsica, he felt like the archangel Michael on speed. Megalomania, he knew, was an occupa- tional hazard. But he'd get back to work soon enough, in just a few more days . . . The phone rang. Rice burrowed into a plush house robe formerly owned by Louis XVI. Louis wouldn't mind; he was now a hap- pily divorced locksmith in Nice. Mozart's face appeared on the phone's tiny screen. "Hey man, where are you?" "France," Rice said vaguely. "What's up?" "Trouble, man. Sutherland flipped out, and COMFORT COOLER they've got her sedated. At least six key lime. By the g lass . 2 oz. Southern Comfort. Yi large fresh people have gone over the hill, counting you." Florida grapefruit juice. Pour Southern Comfort over ice in Mozart's voice had only the faintest trace of juice lime fill with grapefruit accent left. a tall cooler glass. Add of and "Hey, I'm not over the hill. I'll be back in juice, stirring gently. Meliow for half minute as frost builds just a couple days. We've got what, thirty on glass. other people in Northern Europe? If you're ." worried about the quotas . . "Fuck the quotas. This is serious. There's By the pitcher. Fill a 32-oz. pitcher with ice. Add 6 oz. uprisings. Comanches raising hell on the rigs Southern Comfort and juice of 1 Yi fresh limes. Fill with in Texas. Labor strikes in London and Vi- grapefruit juice, and stir gently. Mellow until frost builds on enna. Realtime is pissed. They're talking about pulling us out." outside of pitcher. "What?" Now he was alarmed. "Yeah. Word came down the line today. For a free copy of Southern Comfort's newest recipe guide, They say you guys let this whole operation get sloppy Too much contamination, too please write to: Recipe Booklet, Dept. Gf; Box 12427, much fraternization. Sutherland made a lot St. Louis, MO 63132. " " " " of trouble with the locals before she got found "Christ," Rice said. "You can't possibly be ing a single guard at the open door. Rice out. She was organizing the Masonistas for serious. Are you taking on the project with squirmed in his bonds and tried to sit up. some kind of passive resistance and God these popguns?" Suddenly the clapboards above his head knows what else." "We are aware of your advantage in ar- were blasted to splinters by heavy machine- "Shit." The fucking politicals had screwed maments, sir. This is why we have made you gun fire. Grenades whumped in front of the in the in gush it up again. It wasn't enough that he'd busted our hostage. " He spoke to the others Ger- house, and windows exploded a ass getting the plant up and online; now he man. They tied Rice's hands and hustled him of black smoke. A choking Masonista lifted had to clean up after Sutherland. He glared into the back of a horse-drawn wagon that his flintlock at Rice. Before he could pull the at Mozart. "Speaking of fraternization, what's had clopped out of the woods. trigger a burst of gunfire threw the terrorist all this we stuff? What the hell are you doing "Can't we at least take the car?" Rice against the wall. calling me?" asked. Glancing back, he saw Toinette sit- A short, heavyset man in flak jacket and in leather pants stalked into the room. He Mozart paled. 'Uust trying to help. I got a ting dejectedly the road by the hovercraft. job in communications now." "We reject your machines," Ferson said. stripped goggles from his smoke-black- "That takes a Green Card. Where the hell "They are one more facet of your godless- ened face, revealing Oriental eyes. A pair of did you get that?" ness. Soon we will drive you back to hell, greased braids hung down his back. He cradled an assault rifle in the crook of one "Uh, listen, man, I got to go. Get back here, from whence you came!" of grenades. will you? We need you." Mozart's eyes flick- "With what? Broomsticks?" Rice sat up in arm and wore two bandoliers ered, looking past Rice's shoulders. "You can the back of the wagon, ignoring the stink of "Good," he grunted. "The last of them." He Rice's smelied bring your little time-bunny along if you want manure and rotting hay. "Don't mistake our tore the gag from mouth. He cured leather. to. But hurry." kindness for weakness. If they send the Gray of sweat and smoke and badly through that portal, there won't "You are Rice?" . . Card "I . oh shit, okay," Rice said. Army be enough left of you to fill an ashtray." Rice could only nod and gasp for breath. Rice's hovercar huffed along at a steady "We are prepared for sacrifice! Each day His rescuer hauled him to his feet and cut 80 kph, blasting clouds of dust from the thousands flock to our worldwide move- his ropes with a bayonet. "I am Jebe Noyon. deeply rutted highway. They were near the Trans-Temporal Army." He forced a leather Bavarian border. Ragged Alps jutted into the flask of rancid mare's milk into Rice's hands. sky over radiant green meadows, tiny, pic- The smell made Rice want to vomit. "Drink!" turesque farmhouses, and clear, vivid Jebe insisted. "Is koumiss, is good for you! ! streams of melted snow. Drink, Jebe Noyon tells you bOver the rattle They'd just had their first argument, Toi- Rice took a sip, which curdled his tongue nette had asked for a Green Card, and Rice of gunfire he could hear and brought bile to his throat. "You're the Gray told it. He offered her Cards, right?" he said weakly. had her he couldn't do the whine of a Gray Card instead, that would get her from "Gray Card Army, yes," Jebe said. "Bad- one branch of time to another without letting VTOLjets, bringing in the dest-ass warriors of all times and places! five I kill them all! I, Jebe her visit Realtime. He knew he'd be reas- evacuees, as Only guards here, general Khan, signed if the project pulled out, and he Noyon, was chief to Genghis the Roman centurions led wanted to take her with him. He wanted to terror of the earth, okay, man?" He stared at do the decent thing, not leave her behind in Realtime personnel Rice with great, sad eyes. "You have not a world without Hersheys and Vogues. heard of me." into the tunnels to safety3 But she wasn't having any of it. After a few "Sorry, Jebe, no." kilometers of weighty silence she started to "The earth turned black in the footprints squirm. "I have to pee," she said finally. "Pull of my horse." over by the goddamn trees. "I'm sure it did, man." "Okay," Rice said. "Okay" "You will mount up behind me," he said, He cut the fans and whirred to stop. A herd ment, under the banner of the All-Seeing Eye! dragging Rice toward the door. "You will of brindled cattle spooked off with a clank We shall reclaim our destiny! The destiny you watch the earth turn black in the tireprints of of cowbells. The road was deserted. have stolen from us!" my Harley man, okay?" Rice got out and stretched, watching Toi- "Your destiny?' Rice was aghast. "Listen, nette climb a wooden stile and walk toward Count, you ever hear of guillotines?" From the hills above Salzburg they looked a stand of trees. "I wish to hear no more of your machines. down on anachronism gone wild. "What's the deal?" Rice yelled. "There's Ferson gestured to a subordinate. "Gag him." Local soldiers in waistcoats and gaiters nobody around. Get on with it! lay in bloody heaps by the gates of the refin- A dozen men burst up from the cover of a They hauled Rice to a farmhouse outside ery. Another battalion marched forward in ditch and rushed him. In an instant they'd Salzburg. During fifteen bone-jarring hours formation, muskets at the ready. A handful surrounded him, leveling flintlock pistols. in the wagon he thought of nothing but Toi- of Huns and Mongols, deployed at the gates, They wore tricorns and wigs and lace-cuffed nette's betrayal. If he'd promised her the cut them up with orange tracer fire and highwayman's coats; black domino masks Green Card, would she still have led him into watched the survivors scatter. hid their faces. "What the fuck is this?" Rice the ambush? That card was the only thing Jebe Noyon laughed hugely. "Is like siege asked, amazed. "Mardi Gras?" she wanted, but how could the Masonistas of Cambaluc! Only no stacking up heads or The leader ripped off his mask and bowed get her one? even taking ears anymore, man, now we are ironically. His handsome Teutonic features Rice's guards paced restlessly in front of civilized, okay? Later maybe we call in, like, were powdered, his lips rouged. "I am Count the windows, their boots squeaking on the grunts, choppers from Nam, napalm the son- Axel Ferson. Servant, sir." loosely pegged floorboards. From their con- of-a-bitches, far out, man." Rice knew the name; Ferson had been stant references to Salzburg he gathered that "You can't do that, Jebe," Rice said sternly. Toinette's lover before the Revolution. "Look, some kind of siege was in progress. "The poor bastards don't have a chance. No Count, maybe you're a little upset about Toi- Nobody had shown up to negotiate Rice's point in exterminating them." nette, but I'm sure we can make a deal. release, and the Masonistas were getting Jebe shrugged. "I forget sometimes, 9 " Wouldn't you really rather have a color TV nervous. If he could just gnaw through his okay? Always thinking to conquer the world." "Spare us your satanic blandishments, sir!" gag, Rice was sure he'd be able to talk some He revved the cycle and scowled. Rice Ferson roared. "I would not soil my hands on sense into them. grabbed the Mongol's stinking flak jacket as the collaborationist cow. We are the Free- He heard a distant drone, building slowly they roared downhill. Jebe took his disap- mason Liberation Front!" to a roar. Four of the men ran outside, leav- pointment out on the enemy, tearing through 102 OMNI ' • S Tj5 THE. - • _ . ':pS5,; £p . (|3 FINAL POSTMARK DATE: 1 The co 1 status is September 30, 1985 assured for "i j» it will be Limitf- two plates per collector " strictly limited to firing period? .' a SO-day P!e r. 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And "Mr. Spock" will endure for please return this order form today to generations, because this portrait is fused The Hamilton Collection, 9S50 Regency The Hamilton Collection : :*4',e;icv Blvd.. ,l:if<~ >;,'.?. to a gleaming, &V2" fine porcelain plate, Square Blvd., Jacksonville, FL 32232. )YiO Squ.-iTC P.O. Box ;acb(>:--'iik , FL i.: " the streets in high gear, deliberately running my boy! I transmitted a couple of his new down a group of Brunswick grenadiers. Only tunes up the line a month ago. You know panic strength saved Rice from falling off as what? The kid's number five on the Billboard EARTH CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16 legs and torsos thumped and crunched be- chart! Number five!" Parker shoved the gun neath their tires. into his belt. "With a bullet!" It got to the point that we couldn't even go Jebe skidded to a stop inside the gates of "You gave him the Green Card, Parker?" out on the land to work, to maintain trails or the complex. A jabbering horde of Mongols "No," Mozart said. "It was Sutherland." harvest timber for fear of problems from the in ammo belts and combat fatigues sur- "What did you do to her?" marijuana growers-" himself has rounded them at once. Rice pushed through "Nothing! I swear to you, man! Well, maybe Ranger Paul Wheedon—who to fired upon at least three times while them, his kidneys aching. I kind of lived up to what she wanted see. been Ionizing radiation smeared the evening sky A broken man, you know, his music stolen patrolling the 100-sguare-mile area— paints around the Hohensalzburg castle. They were from him, his very soul?" Mozart rolled his a vivid picture of an isolated wilderness newly kicking the portal up to the high-energy eyes upward. "She gave me the Green Card, dotted with enormous marijuana planta- illegal) two-story maximum, running cars full of Gray Cards in but I guess that still wasn't enough. She tions, elaborate (and and sending the same cars back loaded to couldn't handle the guilt. You know the rest." homesteads, and rotting vehicles riddled the ceiling with art and jewelry. 'And when she got caught you were afraid with bullet holes. Over the rattling of gunfire Rice could hear we wouldn't pull out. So you decided to drag The area, he says, was festooned with vi- spike the whine of VTOL jets bringing in the evac- me into it. YougotToinettetoturn me over to cious booby traps—everything from uees from Africa, and the U.S. Roman cen- the Masons. That was your doing." pits and animal traps to land mines and dy- he turions, wrapped in mesh body armor and As if hearing her name, Toinette moaned namite, "The New River area got so bad," carrying shoulder-launched rockets, herded softly. Rice didn't care about the bruises, the says, "that we finally had to close it down. Realtime personnel into the tunnels that led dirt, the rips in her leopard-skin jeans. She When hikers called up and asked if they to the portal. was still the most gorgeous creature he'd could go in there, we recommended that they Mozart was in the crowd, waving enthu- ever seen. stay away. After the word got out, they tended siastically to Rice. "We're pulling out, man! Mozart shrugged. "I was a Freemason to stay away voluntarily." fight Fantastic, huh? Back to Realtime." once. Look, man, they're very uncool. I mean, In 1984 the Forest Service decided to In cooperation with local authorities, Rice looked at the clustered towers of all I did was drop a few hints, and look what back. pumps, coolers, and catalytic cracking units. happened." He waved casually at the car- they initiated an armed patrol of the New "It's a goddamned shame," he said. 'All that nage all around them. "I knew you'd get away River area, coinciding it with a media cam- work, shot to hell." from them somehow." paign to let the growers know they were there. to have "We're losing too many people. Forget it. "You can't just use people like that!" The constant vigilance appears There's plenty of eighteenth centuries." "Bullshit, Rice! You do it all the time! I turned the tide. The guards, sniping at the crowds out- needed this siege so Realtime would haul "The growers just picked up and moved hike side, suddenly leapt aside as Rice's hover- us out! For Christ's sake, I can't wait fifteen out," Wheedon says. "Now a person can car burst through the gates. Half a dozen years to go up the line. History says I'm going and hunt and fish as much as he wants. The it in Masonic fanatics still clung to the doors and to be dead in fifteen years! I don't want to area is safer than has been ten years." of the pounded on the windscreen. Jebe's Mon- die in this dump! I want that car and that Wheedon thinks that some version gols yanked the invaders free and axed them recording studio!" New River program could serve as a model while a Roman flamethrower unit gushed fire "Forget it, pal," Rice said. "When they hear for other public areas with the same prob- across the gates. back in —Realtime how you screwed things lem. Other civil leaders think law-enforce- Marie Antoinette leapt out of the hovercar. up here ment policies should be even tougher. Cit- Jebe grabbed for her, but her sleeve came Parker laughed. "Shove off, Rice. We're ing last year's CAMP (Campaign Against off in his hand. She spotted Mozart and ran talking Top of the Pops, here. Not some Marijuana Planting), in which state and local for him, Jebe only a few steps behind. penny-ante refinery." He took Mozart's arm authorities joined to raid more than 100 plan- "Wolf, you bastard!" she shouted. "You protectively. "Listen, Wolf, baby let's get into tations and destroy more than 100,000 answer is to leave me behind! What about your prom- those tunnels. I got some papers for you to plants, Cimolino says, "The only ises, you merde, you pig-dog!" sign as soon as we hit the future." do what we're doing: Eradicate marijuana Mozart whipped off his mirrorshades. He The sun had set, but muzzle-loading can- and get it out of our county" turned to Rice. "Who is this woman?" nons lit the night, pumping shells into the But State Senator Keene, a longtime pro- legalization of marijuana, dis- "The Green Card, Wolf! You say I sell Rice city. For a moment Rice stood stunned as ponent of to the Masonistas, you get me the card!" She cannonballs clanged harmlessly off the agrees strongly stopped for breath and Jebe caught her by storage tanks. Then, finally, he shook his "Programs like CAMR" he says, "operate one arm. When she whirled on him, he head. Salzburg's time had run out. on a Vietnam-type theory that if you inflict cracked her across the jaw, and she dropped Hoisting Toinette over one shoulder, he ran enough casualties on the enemy, they will to the tarmac. toward the safety of the tunnels. DO withdraw. But I suspect that this kind of ac- The Mongol focused his smoldering eyes tivity will only entrench the growers who re- on Mozart. "Was you, eh? You, the traitor?" CREDITS main and cause them to arm themselves With the speed of a striking cobra he pulled even more heavily. Page 8, Nancv I eye. I e't;h <-""nedy. Jor-n Mu:h, Richard 16.' ac-i_S;a' page Howard: page 'vlielael K.en:;3 13, "It doesn't seem to me as if legalization of his machine pistol and jammed the muzzle ->".-. NASA; page 20. ;>:;:'.; y page 22. - : _os A dir fj;; Ins :ioi itl abera;ory page 33 top, Olga Spie- Rice spun to his right. Parker, the DJ, stood least some support from the growers them- gel; page 33 bottom, The Belt-ran 1 A'ch .: page 34 top. in the doorway of an equipment shed. He Research T-ianqle .:i*i:*ute; page 34 bottom, :c, Leonard selves. "Legalization," says one veteran '< canar..) -,\-:- VI i ;:.; -.; Speier: page 36, l p.'Kje 37, Prices it 1 grower, "would change everything. held a Walther PPK. "Take easy, Rice," Par- "V ;-.hob by ..>;;.-:' La a ::. aacs 38. J,.!- :"".".:.-i:y: ;>af;^ ; ker said, walking toward him. "He's just a 76, -vi.. Ambrose page 83. courtesy o i W. White ;;ide would drop to almost nothing, and that would page B4 top, V'ovie Stil Arcaivcs; page 84 bottom, Cga grunt, expendable." Spiegel; page 85 top, ,le:;;> :;:; [.'ile-s.-^n.;..::::: Co'cma'-. page get rid of the real criminal element. Then;' 85 bottom, Olaa Spiege : page 86, Jcar.rio l.agle'Psyoh- , he says, "the government could treat us like "You killed h\m\" ica Tosearc- -ai.nda: en. -ic page 112. :L II -ar SL.U ::: drawing adapleci 'few Gen Mayer s Hs'joy'n Cornet Finder, "So what?" Parker said, throwing one arm it treats any other American farmer: Pay us page 113, Scot Morris. around Mozart's frail shoulders. "This here's not to grow."OQ 106 OMNI PHEruannEOiA The question: Is what lies before us a single entity, composed of thousands of distinct parts, or a colony of separate beings, forced into a symbiotic existence by necessity? Scientists have yet to unravel the mystery of the Portuguese man-of-war and its blue-beaded tentacles, which dangle, like strands of a sea nymph's necklace, from an air-filled floating sac. As beastly as they are beautiful, the tentacles can grow to lengths of ten feet and sting and paralyze their victims with a neurotoxin. Then they pass the immobilized prey on to the yellow tentacles, the feeding members of the colony. This particular jellyfish was taken captive while photographer Henry Genthe journeyed on the Diamaresa expedition, which traced the 1940 voyage of John 3 Steinbeck and Edward Rickets to the Sea of Cortez. Biologists scooped the man- of-war from the sea with a net, then placed it in a shipboard aquarium. Using Koda- chrome 64 film in a Canon AE-1 camera outfitted with a macrolens, Genthe recorded "the fish's unique pastel colors and spiral configurations."DO Here comes Mr. Halley's Comet and a flight on a powered parachute EAfVlE By Scot Morris In 1692 an English astronomer published a bizarre theory that the earth is hollow, with an outer shell just 500 miles thick and inner shells having diameters the size of Mars, Venus, and Mercury. He believed that each sphere could support life and that the earth's interior might be constantly illuminated by a glowing gas. Since it was known that the earth is flattened at the poles, it stood to reason that the outer shell would be thinnest— perhaps completely open—at those points. After a spectacular aurora borealis display in 1716, this scholar suggested that the northern lights were caused by light escaping from the earth's hollow interior. Great scientists sometimes make great blunders. When they do and redeem themselves in other areas, posterity forgives and forgets. That's why Edmond Halley is remembered as a great astronomer, not as a hollow-minded geologist. Halley (pronounced 'hal-ee) helped design Royal Greenwich Observatory and established the first Southern Hemisphere observatory, from which he cataloged Halley's Comet (dashed line) will pass through Aquarius. Watch with a Mayer starframe. more than 300 stars. He was a longtime Aquarius is at its culmina- friend of Isaac Newton's. It was Halley who since. It came again in 1835 and 1910, and This month, it in the night sky, encouraged Newton to write up his it has already been sighted heading our tion—the highest point gets 20° 40° theories on the laws of motion. Halley way for its 1985-86 return engagement. some to above the southern horizon published the resulting volume, Newton's Halley's Comet won't be visible to the for U.S. viewers. That will occur at about monumental Principia Mathematics, at naked eye until January, so why are we midnight in mid-September. is "water carrier" constella- his own expense. featuring it now? Because September is the Aquarius the There was some question whether month to familiarize yourself with the night tion because an ancient connect-the- Newton's laws of motion applied to comets, sky and in particular with Aquarius, the dots pattern showed a running man holding those "outlaws of the skies" that seemed constellation in which the comet will first a vessel with water spilling over the sides. constellation. to come and go unpredictably. Halley was appear a few months from now. It's a faint, complicated the man's struck by the similarity in reports of comets The comet will be farther from the earth The small group of stars marking find. sighted in 1456, 1531, and 1607 and the than it was in 1910, so it is not expected head are the easiest to The two and comet he had seen himself in 1682. He to put on quite as spectacular a show. Also, brightest stars are at Aquarius's neck the line decided that all these sightings were of the its first appearance will be down near the hips—fortunately they lie along same comet, which was returning at inter- horizon (10° above the horizon in northern Halley's Comet will be traversing during its appearances. vals of 75 or 76 years. It had a closed orbit latitudes, 30° above in southern, as shown in first naked-eye and was visible for onfy a brief portion of the illustration above). You will wantto Ben Mayer, an indefatigable amateur It visible astronomer in Los Angeles, has recently it, when it came close to the sun. know just where to look. will be to (Perigee, He predicted that the 1682 comet would the naked eye, but it isn't expected to published Starwatch 1984) Finder (Perigee, 1985), return in 1758—the first application of be much brighter than an average star, so and Halley's Comet serious amateur comet Newton's laws of motion. He didn't live to don't expect it to dominate the night sky both boons to any watcher. In Starwatch he outlines two see it (he would have been one hundred Binoculars will give you a better view than is by two; he died at eighty-six, in the centennial was possible at the time of Galileo, and clever original ideas. One a method year of Newton's birth), but the solar even a small telescope will put you at the which amateur astronomers can use an wanderer reappeared right on schedule level of yesteryear's royal astronomers ordinary SLR camera and a standard take and has been known as Halley's Comet ever in Greenwich Observatory. 50mm lens to detect comets. Simply 112 OMNI — an animated film of the cosmic event. To voice your support for the "Halley's Comet- Live from Mount Wilson" project, write to Comet, Omni, 1965 Broadway, New York, NY 10023-5965. PILOTING A POWERED PARACHUTE You don't see many round parachutes anymore. Domina Jalbert patented his square "parafoil" design in 1964, and it has since shown up behind those thrill-ride boats in Rio and Acapulco and among the biggest and highest-fiying kites ever made (see Games, June 1983 and March 1984). Jalbert's patent ran out in 1983, and the parafoil is now public domain. The latest development is the paraplane, Steve Snyder's aircraft for Everyman. Underneath a large parafoil hangs a glorified go-cart with a roll cage and two counterrotating propellers. When flying there are only two controls left-right (with your feet) and up-down (with your left hand). If you don't want to change course, there is nothing for your The author waves on a first-try flyby. Is Snyder's paraplane the safest way to fly? feet to do, and if your altitude is fine, there's nothing for your hands to do, either. two photos of the same area of sky, a night telescopes, before that. The first photo- So you can relax, wave, or shoot pictures. or two apart, and then project the photos graphs by amateurs were taken last Febru- This paraplane has a joke "instrument on a "blink comparator," which allows ary. The first sighting through a big observ- panel"—a mirror and a decal. The mirror tells one to detect any object that has changed atory telescope was made almost three you whether or not you have a full canopy positions. If you want to try this, now is years ago— in October 1982. above you; the decal is an airspeed gauge, the time to shoot your reference slide of Where should you be in early January? with the needle permanently at 26 miles Aquarius, which you can use a few months For best comet watching, scout out a high, per hour. You cannot go faster. You cannot from now to identify any newcomer. dark location, away from city lights and go slower. When the propellers spin faster, The second is an ingenious "poor man's" pollution. Start looking to the southwest the gondola moves out in front of the constellation identifier called a starframe. about an hour after sunset, directly above overhead canopy, the canopy tiits upward, To make one, take a wire coat hanger, the point where you saw the sun go down. and the plane rises. Climbing, descending, pull it out into a rectangle, and then stretch For the rest of January and February, or flying level, the airspeed is 26 mph. a piece of plastic kitchen wrap over it. Halley's Comet will be invisible as it sets for How safe is it? The paraplane can't stall Lay it on a chosen page of Starwatch, and northern observers and passes behind or spin. If the worst thing should happen use white Liquid Paper typewriter-correc- the sun. In March and April it will appear and both engines give out, you are still tion fluid or luminous ink to make spots again, this time in the morning sky, about an on a steerable parachute. You may have a on the transparent wrap corresponding to hour before sunrise. rough landing, but it probably won't kill the stars in the constellations— larger spots Mayer is backing a drive to keep the you. Snyder tells me that of more than 3,000 for brighter stars, smaller spots for dimmer Mount Wilson observatory, above Pasadena, trained pilots, he has not yet heard of an ones. At night, hold your starframe at arm's California, open for just a few months past injury as serious as a broken bone. length, and line up the white spots against its scheduled closing date. If he is The paraplane sells for less than $4,000, the master template in the sky. successful, this historic telescope will be and disassembled, it fits into the trunk of Halley's Comet should first become able to transmit live pictures of the comet to a midsize car. No license is required to fly visible to the naked eye between January TV viewers around the world, and an one. For information, write to the Paraplane 5 and 10. People with binoculars will be invaluable sequence of still photos will be Corporation, 5801 Magnolia Avenue, able to see it before that, and people with taken that can later be assembled into Pennsauken, NJ 08109.OQ ' " class assignments, Deep in the Allegheny mountains, shrouded their semester's " got for Maniacal Laughter in mist and hidden from all hut the most "Who Have you - 101?" de*et tilted expk rer^ *i am peah known to the- handful of local to show residents as "The Mountain." «H a how Apart from these rather unimaginative your molars." ck locals, tew know, ot even suspect, that this As the em I forbidding crag is home to one of the by tie I "1 ; l! it to Este'hazey. rrcs ' 'ent mentioned I know," ho told me, institutions of higher learning ever built. "It's a sexist notion. public simply won't accept an This is "but the brightest eccentric female scientist. Its lough enough tricity, and it is here that some of the at ail minds of our time are learning the skills to make them accept a woman tried, but most of our they will need to become our next generation Believe me. we've look and sound a lot like of eccentric scientists. female scientists As we walked the carpeted corridors of ijeane Klrkpatrick." • c -» the institute, the clElirtguisned headmaster, I i en he, as with him, 11 Alex Estethazey, elaborated on the impor-; colieaques who wished a word ho half fanca of eccentricity to scientists, looking in on other classrooms, "People have a cortaii i stereotypical door marked image of scientists," he explained to me. I slopped before a main f took to be "They want their scientists to be eccentric, 'HAmsrvtEs sasl Inside, al .imply the institute's hairstylist was busily trying to conservative aren't credible. create an eccentric look for a "Unfortunately." he continued, "most older scientist. LMST " r scientists are as normal as you or I. So they Eyeing the stood in thought for a come to us to Seam how to live up to public angles, the stylist "Your tenure's expectations—how lo be eccentric. moment, then blurted out, WORD ' " Sometimes the results can be spectacular" LCI! d and turned By Mitch Coleman He paused and rurned toward a portrait The man's halt stood on end of Albert Einstein that hangs over the yrhite. tWhen Albert institutes great stone fireplace. "One oi our "Next "When I shuddered a! the sight. here, most famous students," lie said Einstein came he next a small he came here, he was just plain old Hans (n the classroom door wot tec' on their accents. was just plain I Vienna, group of scientists ." : have : oid Hans Flugensturfer. Sure.me had some big ideas, but he "I hive, ve have, zey hall. it "That's haft gentlemen ttafi. German couldn t get anyone to take him seriously Sure, he had some You would like to was obvious that he was in need of a a little too tough 'or you? big ideas, but he couldn't complete make-over." try Czech, perhaps?" started in again. "I The institute proceed ec to teach the The men laughed and get anyone ." . young scienl haft, ve haff . of most to take him seriously^ Esietlwey recounted "We taught, him I felt depressed. Some my cherishes illusions weie being si „ llered. 1 the accent, the hairstyle -the whole nine lb get out of there fast. I yards. As a final touch, we changed his Ein-stein? I had 1 sensed name. We called him Einstein because ft was looking for an exit when : .:, -. ! :. ,..:' Hi only took one stein of beer to get him I > short." looped. Ein-stein you see?" "I'm sorry to have to cut your visit something And the first name? hesai" 1 Apparently, "Prince Albert tobacco. Just happened has come up, and have to go of former students has gotten I to have a cart of it lying around." one our into trouble in town, and we have to The make-over worked. Within months " I some bail ihe press gets wind ' i hire before thenovl u ' won to: out celebrity, and wo don't Nobel prize for physics The rest Is history, of it. He's quite the The institute cant guarantee those kinds 'want a scandat" the front door, a stretch of results fot everyone, the headmaster As we walked out drive Esterhazey ran hastened to acid Still, Esterhazey and his timo pulled into Ihe staff do I asked Over the 65-year history oi the school, managed to catch up to him. - V of its graduates have gone an to win what had happened. » i i 80 over the Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, and "He was hard to understand other fields. Our conversation was cut short by a had something to do with a barroom brawl run into the tniiiiions clanging bell. Classes were changing. We and damages that could stepped back against the wail and anoi '_s And with watched as hundreds of intense young that, the cat sped ofl.DO chattering excitedly crowded the f talis I -men. j of Coleman is a CracaQO-baseo' freelance i en route to their next classes. Two them Mitch wo ,% [si , i paused near me. They were discussing 1.