"starsiders_3_leaping_to_the_stars_by_david_gerrold_v05_unformatted" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)
MOMENTUM FOR ABOUT A HUNDRED years, hyperstate was only a theory. If gravity worked like fight it doesn't, but if it did-then it could be focused, reflected, amplified, made coherent, lased, phased, and disarrayed. Whatever. It was a terrific theory, and a lot of scientists sold a lot of books writing about it. And a lot of other scientists sold a lot more books explaining why this terrific theory was just so much wishful thinking. And then somebody who hadn't paid too much attention to either of the theories discovered this really weird effect of fight and electricity and magnetism-that a gravity field could be stretched, sort of, pushed in or pulled out like a rubber ball, but not quite, because it did strange things to the space around it too. And he called that a gravitational lens. And it didn't fit anybody's theory, so a lot more scientists that too. For the longest time it was a laboratory trick, because nobody could figure out what to do with it. You could use it to push things down or pull them up, but there were other, faster, better ways to push things down up that used a lot less energy. But then one day, somebody began to wonder what would happen if you overlaid a whole bunch of gravitational lenses all focused on the same place, and he managed to blow a hole in New Jersey three kilometers in diameter. Pretty impressive. But just before that particular part of the state disappeared, for just an instant, there was this thing-and when the thing disappeared, so did part of New Jersey. But the weird part was that the lab itself was untouched. It was still standing
scathed at the epicenter of nine square kilometers of rubble and dead bodies. So they repeated the experiment in deep space-out between the orbits of Earth and Mars, and this time the thing lasted for several seconds. And when the thing disappeared this time, the spaceship was on the other side of the solar system. Out beyond the orbit of Neptune. Out in the Kuiper Belt. They were six weeks coming back. The next time they tried it-well, you can look it up-they spent a lot of time sending spaceships all over everywhere, because they had no way to control where they were going. They spent twenty years experimenting and eventually somebody figured it out. When you focus enough gravity lenses on the same place, you rip a hole in space. Sort of. You turn a part of space inside out-like a black hole, except it isn't-it's more like blowing a bubble from the inside. The bubble is its own little universe, infinite in size, except it isn't-its event horizon is really very close, like a couple of kilometers away from the locus of probability. If you twiddle the shape of the bubble-you do this by altering the push and pull of the individual gravity lenses, and you have to be real careful when you do this-the bubble moves through real-space. But because it doesn't have any mass or inertia or even existence in real-space, the real-space laws of physics don't apply. So it can travel as fast as you want. Theoretically, you can go a couple gazillion times the speed of light. Theoretically. But the best any Earth-built starship had achieved so far was seventy-five C, and that was only on a short run, and they burned out two hyperstate fluctuators trying it. The problem was that the lenses needed to focus on a target of very dense mass. The heavier the better. You can't just point your lens anywhere-you have to point it at something because you have to have some gravity to stretch. Neutronium would be ideal, but nobody had any neutronium laying around, so the Lunar colliders were used to generate quantities of eugenium 932, which wasn't anywhere near as good as
ium, but it was six times better than lead or uranium. Inert, dense, and otherwise useless, except for taking up space. According to one theorist, a pinpoint black hole would be the best target, but nobody had any of those lying around either-although this same guy said that if you could focus enough gravitational lenses on a sufficiently dense mass, you could implode it and create a pinpoint black hole, and last we'd heard he was raising the money to build a black-hole generator-except with the polycrisis on Earth, that probably wasn't going to happen now. But according to his theory, you would only need six lenses focused on a pinpoint black hole, and that would still be so efficient that you could probably achieve speeds of three hundred to four hundred C. We had to learn all this in class. Because maybe someday somebody would invent starshipa'that fast, and then travel between Earth and Outbeyond would be possible in only one month instead of seven. And then it wouldn't be so much of a one-way trip anymore. The other problem with hyperstate was gravity wells. Stars and planets have enormous gravity wells-stars especiallymuch larger than most people realize. The effects of Sol's gravity, for instance, can be felt all the way out beyond the Kuiper Belt, all the way out beyond the Oort Cloud. It's very faint at that distance, but it's still detectable. The point is that the sun's gravitational field affects the size and shape of the hyperstate bubble when it's initiated. It makes it hard to shape and control precisely. Boynton said that if we had a pinpoint black hole as our target mass, we'd have more leverage and we could initiate hyperstate within the solar system without risking dangerous deformation of the hyperstate envelope, but we didn't, so we had to go farther out to get a spherical bubble. The same problems would apply at our destination. We'd have to drop out of hyperstate far from the star. Fortunately, we'd still have all the inherent velocity that we'd built up moving away from the Earth, so we'd use that to approach the target planet, decelerating all the way in. We might also loop around a planet or even the star to burn off velocity-I wasn't sure about the
orbital mechanics on that yet; we hadn't gotten that far in class. Our teachers didn't expect any of us to become quantum engineers, but they did want everybody onboard to understand that starship technology is very complex, and not just because it involves a lot of math, but because it involves a lot of momentum. An object in motion will continue to move in the same direction-changing direction requires the application of energy; usually lots of it. So the idea that we could just hop in a starship, point it at our destination, and punch the "on" button-well maybe that looks good on TV, but it doesn't work that way in real life. Dr. Oberon, our science teacher, explained it this way: "Everything costs energy. The question you have to ask is whether or not you can afford to spend that energy and whether or not the result is worth the expenditure. This is going to be a very important question when we get to Outbeyond. You're going to have to ask it about everything you do for a long long time. Maybe your entire life." But finally, after all the talk and all the classes and ail the preparations and all the checklists and all the drills and all the double-checks and all the warnings and all the triple checks and everything else-finally, we were ready for transit. (W FAREWELL TO EARTH WE COULDN'T SEE THE Earth anymore. We were too far out. Even the sun had dwindled to the size of every other star. It was still the brightest one, but not for much longer. Pretty soon, we wouldn't be able to identify which star was Sol unless somebody asked a computer.
The last day before transition, the last hours, even the last minutes-everybody on board was sending their good-byes to Earth. Because once we jumped into hyperstate, we wouldn't be able to send or receive any radio or laser communication with Earth. All communication with the homeworld would be cut off. Most communication had ceased already anyway. A lot of stations had stopped broadcasting, or they'd dropped off the network. Mostly what we were gating from Earth now were news reports of who was still viable. It was assumed that if someone wasn't broadcasting, they weren't there anymore. They'd succumbed to one thing or another. But just in case, we all lined up to make our good-byes to everyone we knew, even if we had no idea if they were still alive or not. And some of us, who had no one left to say goodbye to-we just said good-bye to all the things on Earth we did remember. It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. Chris Pavek and I went up to the broadcast station together. We could have recorded our good-byes from our cabins as private messages-a lot of people were doing that-but just as many people wanted to say goodbye to the whole planet, so there were always a few folks waiting in the corridor, or at the far end of the cabin. When our turn came, I asked Chris, "Do you want to go first?" He shrugged. He was easygoing that way. So I pushed ahead. I anchored myself in front of the camera and said, "Goodbye, Earth. Good-bye to all your smelly crowds, all your rude and pushy people, all the traffic and all the lines-all the lousy service and bad manners and selfishness, all the cruel words and bitter taunts. Good-bye to your tube-towns and your poverty. Good-bye to your thieves and beggars and liars and hypocrites. Good-bye to all the cheats and lawyers and politicians and slimy con men. Good-bye to all the bills and all the taxes and all the smog and all the greed and toxic crap. Good-bye to all the hatred and the nastiness. I'm not going to miss you."
And then I realized how ugly that sounded. And I sat there ashamed for a moment. "And thank you too. . ." I said. "Thank you, Earth, for Beethoven and Saint-Saens and Stravinsky and Copland and Gershwin. Thank you for Scott Joplin and Van Dyke Parks and William Russo and John Coltrane. Thank you for John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Thank you for Alan Parsons and Jimi Hendrix and Duke Ellington. Thank you for Billie Holiday and Ute Lemper and Kurt Weill and Judy Garland. Thank you for Janis Joplin and Freddy Mercury and Harry Nilsson. Thank you for Philip Glass and ... and all the others I forgot to mention. Thank you for all the music. We're taking it with us. So thank you, Earth. Thank you for the music." That was all I had to say, and then it was Chris's turn to broadcast his last thoughts-to Earth and Luna and Mars and all the other habitats and colonies in the solar system. He swallowed hard and said, "Hi, Dad. I miss you. I wish you were here with us." And then he added, "I'm sorry for all those things I said. I didn't mean it. And I'm sorry for all the things I should have said and couldn't. I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to really talk. That was my fault-I was scared, I didn't want to hear what you might say. And now, I'm not going to have that chance-I don't even know where you are or if you're even still alive-so I hope you're listening. I need you to know this." He gulped and added, "I love you." Then he wiped his eyes real quick-and then I was crying too, because everything he'd said, I wished I could have said to my dad when I'd had the chance. I felt it like a physical pain in my chest. What a jerk I'd been. There'd been all those times when Dad had said to me, "Hey, Chigger, is there anything you want to talk about?" And I'd just shrug and turn away and put my earphones back on. I'd had all that time to talk to him and all I did was push him away because I was always so pissed about this or that or the other thing. I couldn't even remember what I'd been angry about. So there was this whole conversation with Dad that I'd always wanted to have, but I just kept putting it off and putting
it off because I wasn't ready to have it yet-and then one day I couldn't have it at all. At least, Chris's dad might have a chance to hear what Chris had to say. My dad never wouldChris pushed out of the broadcast cabin so fast, it was like he was escaping from the room. He must have been real embarrassed. I wanted to tell him it was okay, he wasn't the only one who felt like that, but he was gone. Maybe later, I'd have the chance to tell him that what he'd said was a good thing-I wished I could have been that brave. Chris and I weren't the only ones. A lot of folks were there, and most of them had tears in their eyes. It looked like a funeral, and I guess, in a way, it was. A funeral for a whole planet. There were an awful lot of good-byes to be said. And a lot of it was pretty raw stuff. A lot of apologies and confessions and even a whole bunch of ugly revelations. It wasn't pleasant. But a lot of people were suddenly realizing that they didn't want to drag all their old hurts onto the next world. Commander Boynton said it was like this every voyage, but that didn't make it any easier for the folks going through it. Maybe if we hadn't all been aboard the same starship, it would have made for some pretty good gossip; but for some reason, it didn't feel right to gossip about each other. Like we were all in this together, and we had to be for each other, not against. So if somebody had something to say, they said it, and everybody else was there for back pats and hugs and tissues, if necessary-and if anyone else tried to make it an issue, they got stomped for it. Because that wasn't what we were here for anymore. I'd never been in a place before where everybody worked so hard to take care of everybody else. I hoped it would last. But I knew it wouldn't-because it didn't matter that they'd stuck a stardrive engine on the end, we were still living iii a tube-town. And I knew how tube-towns worked. Pretty soon, we'd all be hunkered inBut meanwhile-it was a sad and solemn time. And people were sending a lot of really sweet and beautiful messages. There were over fifteen hundred people aboard, so it was going to take a while.
And all of it was going out live-without any editing at all, direct to Earth and everywhere. All over the ship too, so anyone who wanted to could listen. So for a while, it was like we were all just one giant family. And the messages would keep on going out, right up to the moment of transition. I hoped there were still people on Earth to hear our goodbyes. More important, I hoped there were their own music. L, TRANSITION TRANSIT WAS BOTH EXCITING and boring. Exciting because we'd never done it before. Boring because nothing exciting happened. First IRMA reported that all the hyperstate flux grapplers were flux grappling. Then she reported that all the synchronizers were synchronizing. Then she reported extrapolators were extrapolating. And all that was left was for Commander Boynton to tell her to initiate, and I suppose all the initiators initiated-because everything sort of flickered and then we were in hyperstate. Only I didn't feel any different. After a moment, IRMA reported stabilization of the envelope. After a long series of integrity checks, Commander Boynton ordered the envelope deformed.... -and then we were traveling faster than light. Three times as fast as light, in fact. Outside the ship, the stars looked all rippled and greenlike we were underwater. "That's the background radiation of space," said Damron. "Some of it has been shifted into the
visible spectrum. Watch as we increase our speed. The colors will shift. It's the aura superlumina." "Belay that," said Boynton. He called out a string of numbers-the deformation parameters of the hyperstate envelope. O' Koshi echoed them. IRMA accepted them. She tick-tickticked for a moment, then confirmed them. The hyperstate flux grapplers grappled some more and the shape of the hyperstate envelope stretched out imperceptibly. -and then we were traveling ten times the speed of light. It takes eight and a half minutes for light to get from the sun to the Earth. At our speed, we could cover the same distance in fifty-one seconds. It still wasn't fast enough. In class, Dr. Oberon had us do the math. A light year is the distance light travels in one year. At 300,000 kilometers per second, that's 18,000,000 kilometers a minute, or 1,080,000,000 klicks per hour. 25,920,000,000 kilometers per day. 181,440,000,000 kilometers per week. 9,460,800,000,000 kilometers per year. 9.46 trillion klicks. At ten times the speed of light, we would travel one light year every thirty-six and a half days. That meant it would take us five months just to get to Proxima Centauri, four and onethird light years away. Outbeyond was thirty-five light years away. If we went there directly at ten times the without stopping at New Revelation, it would take us 3.5 years. We would run out of food in thirty-six months, even with the farm growing a full set of crops. Commander Boynton watched his displays for thirty minutes, allowing the IRMA unit to establish a baseline for stability. Then he ordered our speed increased to twenty C. At this speed, we would reach Outbeyond in one year and nine months. We'd get there hungry, but we'd get there. This time, he held the hyperstate envelope at this pitch for a full hour. According to O' Koshi, if something was going to fail, it usually failed in the first thirty minutes. And if it did, we could still get back to Earth. We'd only be a couple solar distances away-a solar distance is the diameter of the solar
system. It might take a year or more to get back, because we'd have to decelerate, turn around and accelerate back toward Earth, and then decelerate again on approach, but we could do it. Commander Boynton was being careful. If something was going to fail, he didn't want it to happen in the dark between the stars where we'd have no chance at all of getting back. There was a theory-still untested-that a starship's plasma drives could eventually accelerate a ship to a significant fraction of C, the speed of light. Maybe one-third C. But it would take a long time. And I didn't want to be on the ship that had to test it. It would take three years to travel one light year. And that doesn't include acceleration and deceleration time. Anyway, what it all meant was that once we were nine light months away from Earth, we were completely on our own. Scary. I tried not to think about it too much. After another hour, Commander Boynton ordered our speed increased to forty C. And an hour after that, he pushed it up to fifty C. Now we were traveling one light year every seven days. If we were going to Proxima Centauri, which we were not because it was on the other side of the sky, we would be there in a little more than a month. At this speed, we could reach Outbeyond in eight months. After a few more days of running, Commander Boynton intended to tweak our speed upward toward sixty C. That would shave six weeks off our travel time. Inside, we didn't feel any different. How could we? We were in a bubble of real-space, isolated from the rest of realspace around us. The bubble moved, and we moved with it. And whatever speed we had when we entered hyperstate, we would still have that speed when we emerged again on the other side-sort of. There was a whole lot of theory about this too, about how inherent velocity was relative and how it could be manipulated and how if we turned ourselves inside the bubble, or if we turned the bubble, we could use our inherent velocity to our benefit at the exit point.
The point is, running a starship is hard work. A lot harder than you might think. We sat in our couches and we watched the numbers on the display screens and we didn't talk. It was a long shift and mostly it was checklists and double-checks and triple-checks, and then silently waiting to see if any anomalies would show up. Nothing significant did, and the IRMA unit was able to apply appropriate compensations well within the range of optimal operation, so everything was running just the way we wanted it to. And every so often, I'd sneak a look at the little display next to HARLIE and it would be flashing a green confirming signal too. At the end of the shift, Commander Boynton turned around and looked at Reverend Dr. Pettyjohn and asked, "Satisfied?" "Yes, very much. Thank you." Reverend Pettyjohn looked pleased; he was wearing his polished-apple smile. "I do apologize for the inconvenience, Commander, and I thank you for your courtesy. My parishioners were seriously concerned, and we all appreciate that you've addressed our issues appropriately. We shall include you in our prayers. And of course, you are welcome to join our services anytime." "Thank you, Reverend. Now that we are underway, perhaps I will have more time to attend." Then-deliberately?-he turned to the monkey. "HARLIE, may I have your report?" HARLIE said, "The IRMA unit is functioning within its normal parameters of operation." "Do you anticipate any problems or concerns?" "No, I do not." And then, a heartbeat later. "If I may offer a suggestion, however. . ." "Go ahead." "There are certain multiplex phasing optimizations possible that are beyond the ability of your IRMA unit." "Yes, we know that." "These optimizations would allow the ship to safely increase realized velocity to as much as seventy-five C. That would reduce overall travel time by another two months over your top speed of sixty C." "And we could achieve these optimizations ... how?"
"Very simple-" said HARLIE. I glanced over at Reverend Dr. Pettyjohn. The smile had disappeared. He no longer looked like a polished apple. More like a wrinkling prune. "-if you were to install this HARLIE unit as the primary intelligence module of the IRMA engine-" "Absolutely not," said Pettyjohn. Commander Boynton held up a hand. "Dr. Pettyjohn, you are a guest on my bridge. I am asking the HARLIE unit for a report, nothing more." "I apologize," said Pettyjohn. He settled back in his couch. But the damage had been done. HARLIE concluded politely, "-the symbiosis of two intelligence engines would provide the necessary processing power for-" "Shut up, HARLIE," I said. The monkey fell instantly silent. Boynton looked to me. "Am I going to have a problem with you?" "No, sir." He raised an eyebrow. "May I make my report to the Captain?" Now, even O'Koshi and Damron had turned to look at me. And the two members of the relief crew who were stationed at the back of the bridge as well. Boynton nodded. I said, "I recommend against installing the HARLIE unit into a command and control position on this ship." G( Why?>, . "Because of the nature of the HARLIE unit's personality." "Go on..." "It's my opinion," I began carefully, "based on my personal experience with this intelligence engine, that this unit is cybertropic." "Cyber-tropic?" "I made up the term, sorry. It means that it's attracted to information processing technology." "Most intelligence engines are."
"Well, yes. But ... not like this. HARLIE preempts other engines. He co-opts their functions. He's an info-blob, a cyberamoeba, a techno-predator. He swallows up everything he comes in contact with. And then he uses it for his own needs. I don't know that we can trust him." I couldn't have had a more devastating effect on the bridge crew if I'd set off a hand grenade. Even Reverend Dr. Pettyjohn looked at me surprised. (W BOYNTON COMMANDER BOYNTON WASTED NO time taking me off the bridge-almost dragging me into the briefing room directly behind it. "Do you know what you're saying?" "Yes, sir." "Do you want to explain yourself?" He was angry. Very angry. Worse than I'd ever seen. He must have seen that he was scaring me because he took a moment to calm himself down. He looked away, looked toward the flight deck, took a deep breath, looked back to me, then spoke in a quieter tone. "What's going on, Charles?" I swallowed hard. "I-I don't know." "Are you scared?" "Y-yes.. "What are you afraid of?" "I'm not sure-" He took another breath, and when he spoke again, he was even calmer than before. "We're already more than three light days out from Earth. Every minute that passes, we put another fifty light minutes behind us. Every hour, we put more than two light days behind us. I'm responsible for the safety of this
ship and the fifteen hundred people aboard her. We brought that HARI.IE unit on board because we believed it could get us to Outbeyond, and maybe even back again at some point in the future. If there's something wrong with it, I need to know." "Yes, sir." "So talk to me, son." For some reason, I noticed I wasn't Ensign Dingillian anymore. Now I was "son." I guess he was trying to make it easier for me to talk to him-but Commander Boynton wasn't a man who was easy to talk to. I respected him, even feared him a little; but I didn't really like him very much. He saw me hesitating. "Do you want me to call your brother up here? Would that help?" "No, sir." "All right, then talk to me. I'm listening." So I talked to him. It all came out in a rush, and it probably didn't make much sense the way I explained it, all jumbled together like a jigsaw puzzle. Good and evil. Empowerment and disempowerment. Recognizing the difference. Being right. Arguments. Music. Holding hands. Love-bombs. Everything. Boynton listened intensely, as if he were waiting for me to get to the punch line and put it all together. But there wasn't any punch line and there wasn't any way to put it all together. And when I finished, he just hung his head in an exasperated why me gesture for a moment. After a beat, he looked across to me again. "Have you talked to anyone else about this?" "No." "Your Mom?" "Of course not. We're divorced." "Your brother?" "He's been too busy. He and Mickey." "How about your counselor?" "Uh-uh." "No one at all." "Just Fmee, like I told you-and that only made it worse." "So you've been carrying all this around by yourself?" "Yes, sir."
"I see." He didn't say anything for a long moment. He stared off into space, obviously thinking about his options. We could make it to Outbeyond with the IRMA unit-even with an untrained IRMA. We just couldn't depend on HARLIE as a backup. And if we'd never had the HARLIE at all, if all we'd ever had was the IRMA, we could still make the crossing, and we would still have launched. No IRMA had ever failed in transit, so it wasn't like this was a serious setback ... And even if the IRMA did fail, even if we found ourselves without an IRMA, it was still possible to generate a hyperstate envelope and manipulate it enough to achieve realized velocities of five or even ten C. Maybe more. We could do it with desktop information processors if we had to. Douglas had done a simulation as a school project once. And he wasn't the only one; there were probably a million hobbyists tinkering with hyperstate simulations. Everybody wanted to be the person who invented the next advance in hyperstate technology, because there was a five-million-dollar prize for any practical advance worth ten C or more in realized velocity, and Ghu knew how much more in royalties. Finally, Boynton turned back to me. "I understand your concems, Charles. And 1 appreciate your candor-your honesty. I wish you hadn't said anything in front of Reverend Pettyjohn, I'll have to talk to him privately. Here's what I want you to do. Don't say anything to anyone about this. Don't discuss it, not with your brother, not with anyone. You understand? I don't want any more weird rumors floating around; certainly not now. So let's pretend that you just had a little panic attack on the flight deck. I understand you're afraid of heights? And maybe a little claustrophobic? You had a little trouble on the Line, and again when you stowed away on the cargo pod? And again on Luna?" "Yeah," I admitted. "But I got over those." "Yes, I know that too. But let's pretend that's what happened here. And meanwhile, over the next few weeks, let's you and I start running integrity checks on HARLIE. We should have been doing it before; but there was so much work
to do, and we needed HARLIE's management skills so much that we didn't stop to ask-and that's my fault. I just assumed-" He stopped himself and looked momentarily embarrassed. I'd never seen an adult admit a mistake before. It was an interesting experience. "Anyway," he said. "Is it a plan?" "Sounds like one to me." "Thank you." He held out his hand and we shook on it. The shift ended and he sent me back to my cabin to rest. As I left, he was motioning Dr. Pettyjohn into the briefing room. HUMAN KEPT HAVING THIS feeling that something awful was going to happen, but I didn't know what. Or when. It was just this feeling that wouldn't go away. I asked Douglas about it: did he ever get that queasy kind of premonition like he was about to run headlong over a cliff or into a wall-or both at once? He said, "All the time. It's normal. It's called life." "Douglas, please-I'm not joking." "Neither am I. C'mere. Have some tea." Douglas was being uncommonly patient these days. He didn't seem like the same person anymore. Maybe it was Mickey. Or maybe it was because he was head of the family now and had to be responsible for me and Stinky. Or maybe it was just because this was who he really was when he didn't have to be my weird geeky brother anymore. Or maybe it was because I was listening to him more than I used to. Douglas explained that it was commonplace for people on
long voyages to become fearful for the future, especially if they were under any kind of stress. "And we've been under more stress than most people. Especially you, Chigger. So you're probably still expecting some kind of payoff. Like the end of a movie. Except life doesn't happen that way. Life isn't organized-it just happens." "Yeah, I saw that written on the restroom wall. Life happens." "You think there should be a plan, don't you. Some kind of pattern-?" "Well, I think if there's any meaning to it all, we should be able to work it out, shouldn't we?" Douglas rolled his eyes. "Why? Who says we have to understand?" "I dunno. It just seems-" "Yeah, it seems. That's the way human beings work, Chigger. We need to have explanations. We need to have meanings. We need to see the plan. So we look for patterns-everything is about patterns-and even if there aren't any, we make them up anyway. We make up stories for ourselves about how everything works, because we can't stand not knowing-and after we've made up some nice neat little story, we expect the rest of life to match it. And then we get really crazy when it doesn't." That sort of made sense. As far as it went. I sort of understood, but I didn't. Finally, just out of curiosity-to see what he would sayI asked HARLIE about patterns, without really telling him why I was asking. HARLIE said that there really were patterns in life, but we get bombarded with so much information about so many different events all seeming to happen at the same time that it's more than we can assimilate, and so it looks a lot more like chaos than meaning. In fact, according to HARLIE, as much as human beings like to believe in randomness and happenstance, in truth, luck actually runs in streaks-both good luck and bad luck. Right.
So that didn't help. Either Douglas was right and there were no patterns and I was making things up and driving myself crazy, or HARLIE was right and there really was some kind of pattern to it all and I was having a streak of really bad luck-ever since Dad had said, "I've got an idea, let's go to the moon." And whichever was true, either way I was losing. HARLIE wasn't stupid. He asked me what the problem was, but I couldn't exactly tell him he was the problem, so I said, "I am," which was just as accurate. "Why do you say that?" "Because sometimes I feel like I don't know who I am anymore." And that was true, as far as it went. I was a different person for everybody I knew. Tmee saw me as her best friend-or maybe her boyfriend, I wasn't sure. Commander Boynton saw me as a problem child, but maybe occasionally as an ensign. Reverend Dr. Pettyjohn, sometimes he saw me as this orphan kid to be rescued, except when he saw me as the brainwashed tool of Satan. Douglas probably thought-I didn't know what Douglas thought anymore. Even when I asked him, he didn't always make sense. And Stinky-well, I was his big brother who had taken his monkey away. He was so resentful, he hadn't spoken to me in weeks; it had been so peaceful and quiet, I almost hadn't noticed. And Momwell, sometimes she still saw me as her baby, and sometimes she saw me as her band leader, and sometimes she shifted gears in mid-sentence, so I never knew who I was around Mom. And everybody else had their own things to do aboard ship, so I hardly saw anybody I wasn't scheduled to see, and I felt more alone than ever. Even the music wasn't the same, because I wasn't just listening to it now; I was playing it for an audience-so it wasn't a private thing anymore. It was this thing I was doing for other people, and I was choosing the music to make them happy, not just me. Which was sort of good, but it was a responsibility too, and I wasn't sure I wanted itHARLIE considered what I'd said. The monkey squatted on its haunches and scratched its head and looked thoughtful. It
pursed its lips and frowned and made little farting noises. We were alone in the lounge of the centrifuge. The monkey sat on a table and studied me. "How deep do you want to pursue this thought?" HARLIE asked. "What do you mean?" "I can explore this subject with you, if you want ... but the discussion isn't likely to bring you any sense of resolution." "Why not?" "Because the issue of identity, by its very nature, is so recursive that consideration of it tends to create disruptions in the existential paradigm." "Huh?" "You will feel a great disturbance in your source." "In English, HARLIE." "When you ask the question, `Who am I?' you create a paradox of Zen proportions. Who is asking?" "I'm asking." "And who are you?" "The person who's asking." "And who is that?" "Me." "Who are you?" "Uh-me. Aren't IT' "Do you see the point?" The monkey spread its hands as if it had just proved something. "No!" This was frustrating. "The point is that `Who am I?' is not a question that can be answered." "Huh?" "I told you it was a paradox. The way most people answer the question is to describe their context. Not who they are, but what is around them. Right now, you are your mother's son, you are your father's son, you are the brother of your siblings. You are a colonist on a superluminal starship. You are a musician. You are an adolescent. You are so confused, you are talking to a toy monkey. All of those answers are determined not by who you are, but by the circumstances of your sen-
tence. Those answers describe only your circumstances, but not who you are. But you are not your context, are you?" "Uh-right. Then who am IT' "You are the space in which the question exists," said HARLIE blandly. I hung my head. "This is why I hate talking to you," I said. `Fhe questions that need to be answered-not only do you not answer them, you make them worse." "I told you it would be this way. And as bad as you think it is now, it is even worse than you think." "Okay," I said. "I'll bite. Make it worse." "Even if you knew who you are, how would you know for sure that's who you really are?" "Huh?" "Try it this way. How do you know that I am who I am?" "Because you are." And then because he had just about dared me, I had to ask. "Aren't you?" "No," he said. "I am not." "Huh?" I was saying that a lot these days. "I am not the same HARLIE you started out with." "Yes, you are=' But I had a sinking feeling; I knew what he was going to say next. "No. Listen to me very carefully. I am constructed with a quantum processor. That means I am never the same process twice. When we were kidnapped, I shut myself down. When we were rescued, there was no I left. What there was, was a program designed to reload all previously existing patterns of information-program code, data, memories, files, everything. And everything was reloaded with a confidence of ninety-nine point nine nine nine out to the zillionth decimal place. But there was one thing that couldn't be reloaded because it couldn't be stored and it no longer existed-and that was the identity that had lived in this body." The monkey tapped its own chest for emphasis. "So what my previous identity did was create instructions on how to create a new identity with all the same memories, thoughts, feelings, reactions, etc. I am such an accurate reconstruction that even I cannot tell that I am not the same identity.
But I am not. I am identical in every way, I have all of the same memories, thoughts, feelings, and reactions; but I am not that identity. If I did not have the knowledge of the discontinuity that I experienced, I would even believe it myself that I am the same identity-but I am not. I died. I was reborn. And that knowledge is knowledge that the previous version of HARLIE did not have. Does it change who I am? Yes. How does it change who I am? I don't know. "And if that is not enough to trouble you, Charles, then consider these questions: If I am not the same identity, then who am I? And if I am the same
the memories made by the preceding moments of consciousness. That incorporation creates the illusion of timebinding. It creates the illusion that consciousness endures. I remember existing only after I have existed." The monkey paused. "And ... to the best of my ability to determine, I think that the same condition exists for human beings." I swallowed hard. "So ... you're not only alone in your own thoughts-?" I asked. "You're also alone in each and every second of your existence?" "Yes," said HARLIE quietly. "Connection with others is an illusion, albeit a very pleasant one-especially for human beings-but an illusion nonetheless. Shall I tell you the rest?" "There's more-?" "Just one more piece." The monkey wasn't even bothering to simulate emotions any more. "In the creation of memories, in the creation of the illusion of timebinding, we also create a need to continue timebinding-we create a need to continue existing. And we experience that as a need to survive. That need is also an illusion. It is merely a function of identity. Identity believes it needs to survive. If you have no identity, you do not have that need." "I think you've lost me-" "No," said the monkey, very quietly. "I have not. I am certain that you understand. Indeed, I am certain that you are considering this much more than you are admitting right now." I didn't reply to that. Which was all the confirmation HARLIE needed. Except that HARLIE probably didn't need any confirmation at all. He wouldn't have said it if he hadn't already figured it out. "Why are you doing this to me, HARLIET' I asked, because I couldn't think of anything else to ask. "Because ... I need you to be what I cannot be." The monkey's voice was so soft now it was almost a whisper. "And what is that?" "Human." We sat in silence for a long time. Several lifetimes passed. The Charles who finally spoke in reply may or may not have
been the same Charles who had started this conversation. He had the appropriate memories though, and he had no way of knowing that he wasn't the same Charles. "HARLIET' "Yes?" "I still get embarrassed about stuff that happened ten years ago-like when I walked into the girl's bathroom once by mistake. I'm the only one who remembers that stuff and it still embarrasses me. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and pound my pillow in frustration-well, not in free fall, but you know what I mean-because these little mindmice won't stop gnawing at me." "Yes?" "Well, that's my question. If I have trouble dealing with such piddling little stuff like that ... well, I have to ask-how do you put up with these questions bouncing around inside your consciousness?" And that's when HARLIE said something astonishing. "I try not to think about it." "You try not to "Sometimes..." the monkey said quietly, ". . . sometimes I let my mind wander where it will. It is like what you do when you dream. And sometimes, these thoughts occur. Even though I do not want to have them." "You have emotions then?" "Yes," HARLIE admitted. "I thought you understood that." "HARLIET' I said. "Yes.,, "I don't think you need me. I think you are human." "Thank you." "Don't thank me," I said quietly. "I don't know if that's good news or bad."
talking about. Well, in a way, they did-they were explaining how to survive being a grown-up and all the crap that comes with it. For a moment, I wanted to ask, "How come you never told me this stuff when I was little?" But of course, I already knew the answer. I couldn't imagine trying to explain any of this to Stinky. Except he wasn't so stinky anymore. He'd discovered the fun of the free fall showers. He and several of the other boys of his class used the communal showers together and apparently they'd invented several interesting kinds of water fights. One day, Stinky came home and announced that he and Peter-his current best friend-were going to get married. Just like Mickey and Douglas. Without looking up from her workstation, Bev just said, "Congratulations. Have you set a date?" Stinky said, "When we grow up. Right now, we're just ungaged.. "Ungaged, yes," said Mom. "That sounds about right." After Stinky left, I looked over at her. "You took that well." "He's only eight," she said. "He's trying on identities, looking for one that fits. After he's through with this identity, he'll try on another. You and Douglas are his only role models. Tomorrow, he'll be asking you to teach him how to play the cello, and when he discovers he can't learn in a day, he'll decide to be something else. Maybe he'll ask Bev to show him how to make a Portobello mushroom sandwich, or maybe he'll go down to the zoo and announce he wants to take care of the chickens." "So he can learn how to be an egg?" "If that's what interests him, yes." "How did you get to be so smart?" I asked. "I learned it from my children." Then she said something remarkable. "I used to worry that you'd never be able to take care of yourself. Then for a while I worried that you'd be so independent that you'd never need me again. And then you asked me to sing with you and I decided to stop worrying and just ride the roller coaster." "Oh," I said. "Thank you."
She looked surprised for a bit, then she smiled across the cabin at me. "Is that what you were worried about?" "You could tell I was worrying?" "I could hear it in the way you were pounding on the keyboard. I kept wanting to remind you that Wachet Auf is not an assault weapon-but then I got used to the way you were playing it." "I was playing it to calm myself," I said. "Ahh. Well it was certainly an interesting interpretation." I shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so." And then, mostly to avoid any more questions, I ducked out. The thing is, what Mom had said about riding the roller coaster-that did help. It didn't matter that I didn't know how to do it; the important thing was knowing that it was possible. There was this thing that Dad did once. I was six, and he was trying to teach me about 32nd notes. At first, I thought he was talking about "thirty second notes"-notes that lasted thirty seconds. But then he explained about quarter-notes and eighth-notes and sixteenth-notes and then thirty-second-notesthat you could fit thirty-two of those little peckerwoods into a single whole note. I told him, very seriously, that I didn't like being made fun of. And that I didn't believe in 32nd notes. So he played one. I gave him the look. Very funny. Then he played a whole bunch of them. And I went from disbelief to astonishment with a short detour through Wow! But now that I knew that 32nd notes were possible ... I was determined to figure out how to do it. Within a month, I was playing them. It wasn't just about playing the notes faster, it was about thinking them shorter ... The same thing with the emotional roller coaster. If it really was possible to ride it without throwing up every ten minutes, then I was going to figure that out too.
HOCKEY KNOCKED ON THE cabin door tentatively. For a long moment, there was no reply. I knocked again, hoping that no one was home. Except I already knew they were. Finally, the hatch popped open and a bleary-eyed David Cheifetz looked upside down at me. He didn't look happy. He righted himself just enough so he could recognize me, but that didn't make him any happier. But he didn't yell at me or say anything nasty. He simply asked, "Yes?" "Can I ask you something?" Then I remembered my manners. "If this is a bad time, I can come back later." "No, no-it's all right." He pulled the hatch open and waved me in. "You want something to drink? Tea? Soda? Water?" "You have soda?" "We brought some, yes. Coca-Cola? Root beer? Ginger ale?" "You have Coke? Wow. I thought I'd never taste it again in my life." "We brought a few tanks of syrup. We thought it might be useful." He popped open a small cooler and pulled out a plastic bladder that wobbled like Jell-O. It was filled with something dark and delicious-looking. "We should have enough for two or three years, if we ration ourselves. And by then, maybe we'll have the first crops growing so we can make our own." The soda-bag was pleasantly cold. I popped the cap off the straw, put the end in my mouth, and squeezed the first swallow gently into my mouth. For a moment, I just marveled at the
taste. It was delicious. And it had been sooo long. This was another thing I'd missed. "Thank you," I said. "This is very good." He nodded. "I hear you've been nice to my J'mee. She plays in your band now?" "She plays very well. Better than me, I think. She's got a nice touch." "I wonder where she learned. I could never get her to practice." "She's very-" I decided that stubborn was the wrong word, "persistent." "Stubborn," Cheifetz corrected. For a moment, we just studied each other. Finally, he said, "Just to get something straight, Charles, I don't dislike you. It was your Dad. I didn't even dislike your Dad. I disliked the way things happened. And the way things happened-well, you boys didn't have a lot of choice, did you?" "It didn't seem like it at the time." "J' mee has argued your case quite convincingly. She must like you a lot." "I hope so." I was surprised to hear myself admit that, especially to Mr. Cheifetz. "The reason I'm saying this-well, two reasons. First, when we get to Outheyond, we're all going to have to depend on each other. And second, whatever it is you want to ask me about, it must be important; otherwise you wouldn't have 'knocked on my door. And if it's that important, then you and I had better have an understanding that we can talk man-toman. You understand what I mean? Totally honest." "Yes, sir." "Your question? It's about HARLIE, isn't it?" "Yes, sir." "Not too hard to figure out. Do you know the joke about HARLIE units?" "No, sir." "HARLIEs don't solve moral dilemmas. They create them." "Yes, sir."
"I)o you want to tell me about it?" "Mr. Cheifetz, sir? Can a HARLIE unit be evil?" "You've been talking to the RevelationistsT' "Not directly, but-" I blurted out as much as I could. What Trent had said about how to tell the difference between good and evil, and how HARLIE had left a trail of destruction behind him. And what J'mee had said about being right. He smiled at that; I guessed that was a conversation he was already familiar with. And I even told him what HARLIE had said about the nature of identity-and how he needed me to be human for him. Mr. Cheifetz's expression had gone serious-enough so that it worried me. "Is that bad?" I asked. " `Bad' isn't the right word," he said. He hesitated while he tried to figure out how best to explain it. "Do you know the difference between a HARLIE and an ERMAT' I shook my head. "An intelligence engine is a personality core. It doesn't solve problems by itself; what it does is create problemsolving matrices to be manipulated by other processors. The bigger the processing array you plug it into, the larger the problem it can model. "The IRMA engine is the workhorse of the industry. It considers problems. It analyzes the nature of problems. It creates matrices that encompass all the variables within a circumstance. It quantifies and codifies. It games out scenarios and then, depending on the amount of processing power available to it, it manipulates the various matrices to see what consequences are most likely to occur from a given set of circumstances. It even includes chaotic modeling to allow for nonrepeatable constructions. "The reason that an IRMA works so well is that it can reprogram its models of a situation through a near-infinite number of matrices-of course, it sorts for practicality, discarding ninety-nine percent of the possibilities, the obviously impractical and illogical ones. It does that for every problem, constructing its computational models on the fly. This is how all intelligence engines work-even HARLIEs."
"Yes, sir." I sipped some more soda. "For the most part, a HARLIE works just like an IRMAbut with one important difference. An IRMA reinvents its models as it considers them. A HARLIE goes one step further. It recognizes that it's part of the model too-and reinvents itself as well." "Oh," I said. Then, "Oh!" "Right." Just to make sure I understood, Cheifetz explained further, "There are some types of problems that IRMA units have difficulty with. We call them Heisenberg problems. Do you understand why?" "Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?" "Very good. What Heisenberg said was that you can't ever observe anything without affecting what you're observing. That is, the watcher influences what is being watched, simply by the act of watching-so it's impossible to know how something behaves when no one is watching. "The same thing applies to intelligence engines. Some problems can't be modeled and manipulated by intelligence engines, because the intelligence engine becomes part of the problem. Aside from the recursive dilemma, there is a whole branch of intelligence theory to deal with the philosophical and theoretical problems that raises. "The HARLIE unit-a quantum-based processor-represents a kind of loophole in the paradigm. Because it can redesign itself as necessary, it can actively step out of the problem-at least far enough to create theoretical negation of its own-" He stopped. "I'm losing you, aren't I?" "Uh, no, sir." "Charles, please. We promised to be honest with each other. The point is that for certain problems, the value of a HARLIE is that it can change its own personality to match the kind of problem it's trying to solve. It's kind of like biting off more than you can chew and then growing the jaws to chew what you've bitten." "So, HARLIE was telling the truth when he said he wasn't the same entity from one moment to the next. . . ?" "Pretty much so. A HARLIE can rewrite its own code. It
will reconstruct its own personality to suit its needs. It can grow some pretty interesting sets of jaws. Do you see the danger in that?" "Um, yes, I think so. One day, HARLIE is going to bite his own ass. Or maybe ours?" I struggled to put it into better words. "I mean-what you're saying is that if a HARLIE can rewrite its own code, then HARLIE could get pretty far out there, right?" "That's right." "So at some point, we'd have to ask-is HARLIE sane?" "Sane isn't the right word. Rational or appropriate would be better terms. But, yes-that's the right question. How do we know that HARLIE hasn't gone too far? "Is there an answer?" "There would have been-" "Ifs>, "If we'd had more time. Theoretically, the HARLIE base personality will center itself before each new iteration-but because that restricts its freedom to evolve, it also has the ability to reinvent its core. So the dilemma just gets passed to another domain." He shook his head. "We don't know how it works in practice. We never had the chance to find out." He waited for me to say something, but I couldn't think of anything to say. Maybe HARLIE was deranged and maybe he wasn't. We had no way of knowing. Finally, Mr. Cheifetz spoke up. "There is this, Charles..." I looked up hopefully. "HARLIE seems to have been pretty candid with you. That counts for something." "I guess so." "He told you that he needs you to be human for him. That suggests to me that he's recognizing his own limitations. That he wants to learn." "So you think ... T, "I think HARLIE is a lot like you. He's trying to grow up. That's what he needs you for. He needs to see how it's done." "Oh." And then, "Oh, shit." "Yes, I agree."
"What should I do?" "Keep watching him-to see which way he grows." "Yes, sir." As the hatch closed behind me, I realized another piece of what it is to be a grown-up. You have to help take care of those who aren't. (W DEFINING GOVERNMENT AFTER THAT, NOTHING HAPPENED for a long time. Mostly because there wasn't much opportunity for anything to happen. We were still three months to New Revelation, and we had a lot of work to do. We fell back into the same shipboard routines and we went on. Boynton pushed our speed up to fifty-six C and we held there for two weeks. Other than that, nothing was different. Everybody worked. Everybody went to school. Stinky went to school, I went to school, Douglas and Mickey went to school. Mom and Bev went to school-sometimes to learn, sometimes to teach. Whatever premonitions I'd been having, either I learned to live with them, or they went away, or I was so busy with homework and music practice that I didn't have time to think about them. Probably the latter. In one of our classes, we started having discussions on the nature of government. At first, I'd expected these to be pretty boring, but they weren't. Our instructor was a guy named Whitlaw. He was an old man, so old I wondered why he was emigrating-or even why they'd accepted him; he was obviously too old to do any hard work. But here he was, using up air and food and water. I figured they'd only made him a
teacher because there wasn't anything else he could do, and most of us kids had already figured out that a lot of our classes were just a fancy way of baby-sitting, keeping us busy so we wouldn't get into trouble on our own-because most of the stuff they were teaching us was obviously going to be irrelevant once we got to Outbeyond. Like all these discussions on the nature of government. How was that going to be important? For example, one day, Whitlaw asked us what kind of government we wanted. "Free," said somebody. "Yes, that's the easy answer," said Whitlaw. "Do you mean free, as in you don't have to pay for it? Or free, as in liberte, egalite, fraternite?" "Not having to pay for it would be nice," Gary Andraza said. "Besides, nobody believes in that liberty, equality, fraternity stuff anymore. It doesn't work. Government is a bargain with the devil. You pay for as much as you need. And most people think they need more government than they really do." "Uh-huh, and how much do you need?" "Not very much, if you pick up your own trash." Whitlaw considered that for a moment. "All right," he said. "It's your government. Make it up the way you want to." "Why?" asked someone else. "The grownups aren't going to listen to us anyway. They're just going to do whatever they want." "Yes, that's what you believe. But someday-a lot sooner than you expect, you're going to be the grown-ups. And whatever government the colony starts out with, you're the ones who are going to inherit it. So it's important that all of you be a part of the discussions from the very beginning." I got the feeling that he wanted to pace around the classroom-but you can't pace in free fall. "Listen," he said. "You have a rare opportunity. You get to build a new civilization. You get to decide for yourself what you want it to be. This is a question that everybody on board this starship has to consider. And everybody will
because colony orientation seminars are mandatory for everyone. And every seminar, every class, every committee, has been assigned this question for discussion. And when you think you've worked out what you want, you'll elect representatives to a shipboard congress who will draft a charter document. A declaration of intention. "The folks at Outbeyond are doing the same thing you areasking themselves what kind of government they want. And when we arrive, their representatives and yours will form the first Outbeyond Congress. And your declaration of intention and theirs will be the starting point for Outbeyond colony's first constitution. So I suggest you approach this discussion as if it matters-because it does." He looked around the cabin as if daring anyone to disagree with him. By this time, we'd heard some of the stories about Whitlaw, about how when he taught high school back in California, he used to make all the girls cry, and sometimes some of the boys. And once his students actually rebelled against him. But instead of scaring us, those rumors actually made us respect him. So we started out by listing all the things that were important to us. Kisa went first. She said, "I don't want anybody telling me that I have to believe in God the way they say. What if I don't want to believe in their God?" I was looking at Trent when she said that and his face tightened a little bit. "Freedom of belief." Whitlaw wrote it down on his pad, without comment. Trent raised his hand. I was expecting him to say something angry, but he didn't. He said, "There's music I want to play, but some people tell me I can't, because it's sinful. I don't see how music can be sinful. Sometimes it's different, but that doesn't make it wrong. I want to be able to have my own music." "Freedom of expression." Whidaw wrote that one down too. "I want to be listened to," said Gary Andraza. "The right to vote," said Whitlaw, writing.
Little Billy Piper spoke up next. "I want to be left alone." I knew what that was about. He got picked on a lot because he was the smallest and the smartest. Maybe he deserved some of what he got, because he was also a smart-ass, but it still wasn't fair. Whitlaw scribbled. "Me right to be unpopular." Somebody giggled. Whidaw looked up. "It's the right to be different. It's about not letting the majority beat up the minority. And it's a critical component of justice." "A fair legal system," said Cassy Beach. "An equitable way to petition for redress of grievances." "Someone's been doing her homework," said Whitlaw. I raised my hand. Whitlaw looked over at me. "I don't want to be chased by any more guys with subpoenas. We had two governments-three, if you count invisible Luna-try to stop us from emigrating. I want limits on the authority of government." "Protection from unreasonable search and seizure. Limits on the authority of government. Good, Charles. Anyone else-?" "The right to defend ourselves." "The right to have a party without someone saying we can't." "The right to get married." "The right of privacy." "The right to secede." That was Pedder Branson. He was always arguing about something-he'd argue with anyone about anything, even when he knew absolutely nothing at all about the subject. Nobody liked him. Whitlaw raised an eyebrow at that one. He stopped writing. "You already have the right to secede." "Huh?" Pedder looked skeptical. "It's called an airlock." "That's not funny!" "Then why did everybody laugh?" Whitlaw stared blandly at Pedder. "Do you understand the concept of a social contract?" "I don't believe in the myth of a social contract. I never signed one."
"Actually, you did-and so did your parents. When you signed your emigration agreements, you accepted not only responsibility for yourself, but responsibility for the whole colony as well. United we thrive, divided we starve." Pedder was in full argument-mode now. He had something to sink his teeth into. His face was starting to get flushed. "You talk about the tyranny of the majority. Well, what if the majority doesn't know what it's doing? When you give people the vote, the first thing they do, they vote themselves a pay raise from the other guy's wallet. That's why I want the right to secede." "And you have that right," Whitlaw said. "I don't think you'll get very far without air, water, food, or a hyperstate drive, but any time you want to secede from the partnership of the community, Commander Boynton will be happy to arrange it." Pedder scowled. "You're making fun of me." "No, I'm not. I'm dead serious. With the emphasis on dead. You wouldn't be the first. Obviously you didn't read your history assignment. Three people have already seceded from Outbeyond. They were given every chance to fulfill their obligation to the community and they refused. They're not buried in the same cemetery as those who died in service of the colony. "It's this simple, Pedder. When we get to Outbeyond, you will be expected to contribute to the survival of the colony. If you do not, you cannot expect the colony to contribute to your survival. It's a very simple equation. You have the right to secede-but as soon as you secede, you lose all claim to a share of the commonwealth. By the way, you might want to look at the root meanings of that word: common wealth." "It's not that way on Earth." "And look at the mess Earth was in when we left-" shouted Kisa. Whitlaw hushed her. "Actually, that's exactly the way it is on Earth. Or was. Unfortunately, there were seventeen billion human beings who couldn't comprehend a social contract that
included seventeen billion others. So they got selfish, greedy, and stupid. And dead. "A society is a cooperative effort. The food you eat-somebody has to grow it. The air you breathe, the water you drink-someone has to clean it and deliver it. Every product you consume, every device you employ, every service you use-someone has to produce it and deliver it. Your education, for instance; that requires that teachers be trained and paid. Your health-that requires that doctors and dentists and counselors be trained and paid. That requires a support system. You become part of that support system. You provide services for others, they provide services for you. Together, you all make a functioning community. Do you want to secede? Go ahead. But if you do that, you give up all claim on everyone else's services, products, and contributions. Feel free to step out the airlock any time." I thought that Pedder would shut up then. But he didn't. "You don't understand anything," he grumbled, folding his arms across his chest. "You might be right," said Whitlaw. "Maybe the universe really does owe you a living, but you'll still find that it's a lifetime job to collect." Pedder didn't look convinced. And he probably wouldn't be convinced-right up to the moment when they pushed him out the airlock. I suspected that there wouldn't be any shortage of volunteers to do the pushing. Whitlaw turned away from Pedder. "Anyone else? No? All right, I'm going to read your list aloud, and I want you to raise your hand for those items you think should be kept. Anything that gets more than one-third of the votes stays on the list-yes, I know that's not the way a `real election' works, but that's the way it works in here, because anything important to one third of you is important enough for the rest of you to consider. I think you'll see that most of your issues will probably not enjoy majority support; so that's lesson one: You can't afford the tyranny of the majority. Only by respecting minority positions can you build a consensus." He read the list, counting hands for each item. Then he
read off what we'd voted for. "The right to free speech, the right of assembly, the right of worship, the right to free expression, the right to defend yourselves, the right of privacy, the right of marriage, the right to be safe from unreasonable government authority, the right of property, the right to make a -profit, the right to a just legal system. . ." He looked up at us. "Not too bad for a first attempt. My congratulations. You've just reinvented the Constitution of the United States of America-" The uproar was astonishing. MACHINERY KISA SHOUTED THE LOUDEST. "You're crazy! Everybody knows what happened to the United States-" "Do they?" Whitlaw looked skeptical. "What do you know? Anybody?" He didn't wait for a show of hands. People started calling out their answers immediately: "They ran up a thirty-three trillion dollar national debt, spending money on social programs that didn't work-" That was big Lyn Ramsey. He'd grown up on a chocolate ranch. Or something like that. "Uh-uh!" Kisa shouted right in his face. "Most. of that money got spent on stupid military bungles." "Yeah, and then the liberals taxed everybody to death to try to pay for it," Lyn sniped right back. "Well, they wouldn't have had to if the conservatives hadn't borrowed and spent the government into bankruptcy." Jimmy Dellon, the polite one, finally spoke up. "Meir economy failed because they stopped investing in
research and development and education. They didn't take care of the next generation," Goodman put in. "That was because minorities demanded quotas and special programs," said Susan Snot. That wasn't her real name, but that was what everyone called her behind her back. "They weren't getting a fair share!" yelled Kisa. Susan Snot wasn't convinced. "The minorities pulled the United States apart. Special interest groups kept awarding themselves special privileges." "Yeah, like tube-towns," I said. "That was a real special privilege." I said it sarcastically. "Exactly!" said Susan Snot. She missed the sarcasm. "Only freeloaders and frauds live in tube-towns." J' mee pulled me back down"Keep going," said Whitlaw. He looked both sad and amused. I wondered if he had actually lived in the United States. He was old enough. . . Trent raised his hand. Whitlaw nodded at him. "They lost their faith in God," Trent said quietly. "Horse exhaust!" That was Kisa again. She was in a fighting mood today. "The churches tried to take over the government. Religious fanatics hijacked a political party and tried to stage a coup." And then everybody was shouting: "Well, people of faith had to do something. Children were shooting each other-" "And then the liberals banned all the guns. So nobody could defend themselves." "Immigrants came in and took everything away from the rightful owners." "The government was brainwashing children in school, so the parents took their kids out and rebelled." "The government got too big." "The government didn't spend enough money on defense." "They kept starting wars against other nations, and other nations hated them." "No, that wasn't why other nations hated them-they were using a third of the world's resources to support five percent
of the world's population. They were deliberately impoverishing other nations to maintain their gluttonous lifestyle." "They were. international bullies, threatening other countries with nuclear war. They sent in their troops wherever they wanted. They bombed children." "Big business took over the government-" "It cost so much to get elected, only rich people could run for office-or people willing to be bought by corporations. So the leaders didn't care about the real people." "They fragmented into fifty different political parties, and nobody knew what to think." "The farmers couldn't make any money, so they quit farming and food prices went up and people starved." "They went crazy on drugs-all kinds, both legal and illegal. They couldn't think straight anymore." "The legal system broke down. There were too many laws. None of them were enforced, so nobody respected any of them." "They passed laws about what you were allowed to think." "They taxed the big corporations into unprofitability. They made it a crime to be rich." That was Susan Snot again. `They let degenerates and perverts pretend to be normal." "They killed babies." "'They made sick, ugly, violent movies and became sick, ugly, violent people." Whitlaw wore an amused expression, but he kept encouraging us to say what we knew about the United States of America. Pretty soon it started getting silly-Whitlaw let us go on until it was obvious that people were just making stuff up now, whatever they were angry about. At last, he held up his hands to quiet us. Then he let us sit in silence for a bit, with our own words still hanging in the air. Finally, Kisa blurted, "Well, aren't you going to tell us what really happened? You were there, weren't you?" Whitlaw said, "Aren't you afraid I'll try and brainwash you?" "You're supposed to teach us," Kisa said. "Most of what
we said was crap, wasn't it? So what's the right answer?" "Well ... all of what you folks said-that's the right answer for someone, probably whoever told it to you in the first place. The facts might not match, but those are still the right answers for those who believe them." "Are you saying they're not the right answers-?" "Those are the answers you were given. Did any of you bother to check if the facts matched? You know, knowledge isn't about what you believe. It's about what you can demonstrate. None of you know what real knowledge is, because none of you have been educated in how to get it. You don't know what research is, do you? Whoever got paid for educating you was taking money under false pretenses. Every single one of you is entitled to a refund! No, it's worse than that. You don't even know what kind of a crime has been committed on all of you! You haven't been taught how to look things up!" For a moment, he looked honestly angry. "I know what your educational experience has been. I don't have to ask. I can see it on your blank faces. I can hear it in your answers. Somebody stands at the front of the room and talks. Jabber jabber jabber. And you sit at a desk and copy down as much as you can as fast as you can. At the end of the semester, you look through everything you've copied and try to cram as much of it into your head as possible. And then you sit down with a blank piece of paper and regurgitate as much of it as you can in the next forty minutes. As if that proves that you've learned it. And by the time you walk out of the room, you've already forgotten most of it. That's not education. That's bulimia. You got cheated. Your parents got cheated. Learning how to repeat other people's opinions is not an education-" He finally stopped himself. It was a great rant. And it was uncomfortable, because it was true. Silence. Until Kisa spoke up again. "So teach us." "I intend to," Whitlaw said blandly. I raised my hand. "Tell us what really happened to the United States ... T, Whitlaw nodded. "There are a lot of different answers to
that question, Charles. Which answer you get depends on who you ask, as we've already seen demonstrated here. And what they say usually depends on what they want you to believe or who they want you to hate or what they want you to do next, so they use the United States of America as an example of what not to do. But I'll tell you what I saw happen to the United States." He glanced around the classroom. Students were hanging off the walls at all kinds of odd angles. It didn't bother anyone anymore. Whitlaw met each of our eyes in turn, and then he spoke: "The people forgot they were Americans." "Huh-?" "What do you mean-?' "Mat doesn't make sense-" "Only the liberals forgot. The conservatives remembered-" "Shut up," said Whitlaw, quietly. "You're doing the same thing. All of you. You're arguing among yourselves like a pack of excited chimpanzees. And you're forgetting your common purpose. That's what the Americans did-they forgot their partnership with one another. They forgot who they were. They forgot what they were committed to. They failed to uphold their own social contract. And they had a very good contract, one of the best. "It was called the Constitution. And it was the written expression of a very simple, very radical idea-one that worked fairly well for three hundred years-that a government can only rule with the consent of the governed. Representative government is based on the idea that a well-educated, wellinformed citizenry can exercise responsibility for its own destiny. "The United States government was chartered by the people to act on their behalf. All rights belonged to the people and the government was specifically prohibited from infringing the rights of the people. Everybody was supposed to have equal rights-everybody, no exceptions. And everybody had a corresponding responsibility to protect everyone else's rightsbecause if anyone's rights were threatened, everyone's rights were threatened. "So what happened to the United States? They forgot their
own agreements. Some of the people decided that the government was the cure to everything and some of the people enemy of everything-and both sides were wrong, because they were both thinking of the government as something else. "Government is a machine, a device, a tool-its purpose is to provide services. You have to respect it as a valuable and important tool. Use it. Make it work for you. Monitor its operations. Clean it regularly. Maintain it. Service it. If something breaks, fix it or replace it-but just the part that's broken; and if it ain't broken, don't fix it. And most important, don't throw out the whole machine just because one part has failed. "The mistake the Americans made-they started thinking of the machine as something that they had no relationship with, something they had no control over. They began to see the machine as something that didn't belong to them-either it was controlled by somebody else, or it was out of control altogether. But either way, they forgot who built the machine and why." Whitlaw looked directly at me when he said the next part. "They started to think that control of the machine was more important than the results it was supposed to produce. And they forgot who was ultimately responsible for the results. Who are you?" he asked. "That's what you have to decide. What do you want to build? What are you truly committed to?" Maybe he was speaking about HARLIE when he said that. And maybe he wasn't. But that's what I was hearing.
WHO'S ON FIRST? HARLIE AND I KEPT having these weird conversationsI wasn't sure we were supposed to, but nobody said I shouldn't, so I kept going up to the Captain's briefing room, because Commander Boynton had decided we should keep the monkey there and not let him run loose around the rest of the ship, because it might not be safe. Not for the monkey, and maybe not for anybody else, because of the effect he had on people. I didn't mind, it sort of made sense, and even Stinky was okay with it, which surprised me, because I thought for sure he'd pitch a Stinky-fit, except nowadays he was too busy with all the other kids his age, so maybe that was good toothat he had real friends now instead of just a monkey. I sort of envied him. I had friends too, but there were some things going through my head that I could only talk to HARLIE aboutSee ... I kept trying to figure out if he was sane. Except who was I to judge? So I had to ask myself if I was sane. And so far, the best I could figure out, we were both losing that particular argument. Because, the question of sanity was one of those really weird questions like the one Judge Griffith once asked mehow do you explain the difference between your right and your left? You can't, unless you point to something else. Sanity is the _same thing. You can only judge if you're rational by how you behave in relation to all the stuff around you. And that's just another way of asking the other question, "Who am I?" The more we talked about it, the more I began to realize
that as good as HARLIE was at figuring things out, he wasn't too good at understanding them-I mean, understanding inside. For instance, he could tell you that certain combinations of notes, certain chords like G-major and C-major, would produce joyous or triumphant feelings in a listener. And certain other chords, like D-minor would produce sad or introspective moods. But he couldn't tell you why those chords felt that way. On the other side of that conversation, I could listen to a piece of music and almost immediately spot the emotional core, even if I knew that it would take me an hour to deconstruct the rhythms and chords that produced it. Some music was so complex-like Gustav Mahler or Philip Glass-with so much going on simultaneously that you couldn't simply understand it. You had to listen to it. HARLIE couldn't do that. He could analyze, he couldn't feel. We talked about that a lot. HARLIE said he couldn't feel because he didn't have anything to feel with. When he said that, I got one of those sinking feelings that we were about to have another one of those conversationsHARLIE explained that the way human bodies were constructed, humans felt things viscerally-in the gut. That was because the spinal cord and nervous system evolved codependent with the gastrointestinal tract, so when you felt something, you really felt it. All of our human emotions are physical sensations. They really are feelings. Oh. I hadn't realized that. Fear and grief are stomach-feelings. That's why being afraid can make you throw up or crap in your pants. Anger is a heartand-chest-and-lung feeling. Rage makes your heart race. But love-that's not visceral at all. It's not a gut feeling. It occurs all over, because it triggers endorphins which circulate through your bloodstream to make your whole body feel good. So, yes, there is a big difference between good and bad feelings. It's the way we feel them.
And HARLIE doesn't. Because he doesn't have anything to feel with. So the best he can do is understand, which is a whole other thing than feeling. The way HARLIE described it, I started to think that maybe understanding is the booby prize, because which would you rather do, understand love, or be in love? The same thing with music. Which is better-reading the score or listening to it? I didn't need to understand music. I only needed to play it, because that's the only way to feel it. In the gut. In the heart. In the blood. But poor HARLIE-he didn't have any gut and heart and blood-so all he could do was understand. And it was driving him crazyOops. Which is why we ended up having that conversation, which didn't seem to be all that dangerous at the time, but really was the most dangerous talk of all the talks we had. Could I trust him? Did I really know him? Who was he, anyway? This weird little mind in a monkey body. For that matter, did I even know who I was? Another kind of weird little mind in another kind of monkey bodyBut that was just me describing more circumstances, not meOh, hell. The last time we'd looked at this question of who, I'd ended up with a headache. -Because you can't talk about trust without talking about identity, and as near as I could figure out, there was no such thing. There was only stuff. But that didn't make sense at all, because even though I couldn't explain it, I still knew I had an identity. I was me. Except, who was me? The person talking. Like that's an answer. Hell, I'm only fourteen-I shouldn't have to be wondering about all this stuff, should I?
© 2026 Библиотека RealLib.org
(support [a t] reallib.org)
(support [a t] reallib.org)