"Gould,.Steven.-.Helm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

Stavinoha, a middle-age man with a shaved head, said, "It's certainly better than we can get from this solar system." Stavinoha had been the last person off Planet Earth, launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in a converted ICBM six weeks after the Earth's mantle was breached at Tehran and, miraculously, snagged at the peak of his ballistic arc by an American Epsilon-Class orbital tug. Unlike the rest of them, he knew firsthand how bad conditions were on the planet.
The temperatures at Earth's equator hovered around
4 degrees Centigrade. Snowstorms and high-altitude dust clouded the planet.
Herrin continued. "There are seven thousand humans on the moon in facilities designed for six hundred. If we don't do something about reducing the load on our current resources, everyone will die. Given our current status, we might die even if we do reduce the load."
More nods. "So, we send four thousand in the ship in cold sleep for one hundred and twenty-five years. However, since it was desianed for one thousand, we'll have to use cargo space as well. This is acceptable because we can't afford to send all that equipment and supplies away. We need it here to survive on Luna and, eventually, to rehabilitate the Earth." "But they'll need that equipment!" said the NASA/ESA rep. "It was in the original mission specs!"
Dr. Herrin shook her head. "Yes and no. They'll need that equipment if they're to have a high-tech society at that end. It's been estimated that they won't need
4 - STEVEN GOULD
it to survive. It's a certainty that we do need it here to survive."
She paused to look around the room. "So . . . our main problem is how to insure they have the highest chances of survival given a low-tech environment." Dr. Herrin looked now at Dr. Guyton, a small man wedged into the corner outside the circle of the executive committee. "I'd like the Focus Committee to summarize the proposal."
Dr. Guyton, an anthropologist, leaned forward and cleared his throat. "We feel that there are three areas we must concentrate on: nutrition, hygiene, and literacy. As you know, the ship already holds a comprehensive and nearly indestructible library. If we can get the colony to retain literacy while surviving the initial colonization effort, we think they can build back to a comparable technology within three hundred years. In the meanwhile, maintaining good hygiene and nutrition will take care of ninety percent of their health problems. Other problems can be taken care of by practical nursing, but, no matter which way you stretch it, they'll lose people that we could save with our current technology."
He looked around to make sure everyone understood. "What is needed is a strongly enforced code of behavior that will insure good nutrition and hygiene as well as keep succeeding generations literate. "Codes of this kind have been a part of every viable culture in our planet's history, but the most striking example is that of the Talmudic Laws followed by Judaism. Not only do they provide specific instruction on nutrition and hygiene, they also require a Jew to demonstrate literacy as he comes of age," "We don't have four thousand Jews on the moon," said Spruill of Logistics. "No, of course not. Besides, we need a much more abbreviated version than the Talmud. It contains much that is inapplicable and, frankly, countersurvival under
H E L M - 5
these circumstances. My staff has prepared the basic tenets, and we are fleshing them out. We will he ready by the time the ship is."
Bauer, a fort-ner congressman from Connecticut, spoke. "What's to make them follow your code? When they're scrambling to stay alive on that distant world, what's to make them take the time to teach it to their children? Are you going to hand it down to them on clay tablets?" "No." Dr. Guyton exchanged glances with Dr. Herrin. "We propose using the imprinter."
Bauer recoiled. "Jesus Christ!" Another voice said, "You want to do what?" There was a moment of chaos as everybody tried to speak at once. It subsided almost immediately, but faces betrayed rage and fear.
Herrin raised her hand and let the silence stretch a bit before she spoke. "Consider carefully, please. Everything depends on what we decide here today." She waited a moment. "Bauer, you object to the imprinter?" "Our fellow humans destroyed each other because of the imprinter! I'm outraged that there's even one on the moon! How could this happen?"
Dr. Guyton shook his head. "There isn't an imprinter on the moon ... but we know how to make them." He leaned forward and held out his hands. "Look, it's true that the French dropped Mag Bottle Seventy-four on Tehran because the Iranians were using the imprinter to forcibly convert Muslims and non-Muslims to their particular brand of Shiite fundamentalism. But this is an argument against antimatter as much as it is against the imprinter. We can't ignore the fact that it could make the difference between life and death for the human race! If we imprint the tenets on the colonists, they'll adhere to them automatically-with almost religious fervor. This will assure that they pass it on to their children at the earliest age.
6 - STEVEN GOULD
It's not as if we're inducting them into a particular political or religious philosophy. "And we must also consider the imprinter's ability to drop a lifetime of experience into the user's mind. If we were to send loaded imprinters with the crew, we would have a further hedge against failure."
Bauer exploded. "At what cost? You know that information instilled by personality dump is useless without adequate preparatory education. You do that to an ignorant man and you'll end up with a dangerously confused ignorant man. Besides, no matter whom you choose for the template, there's no such thing as slantfree information. A political bent will still be imparted!"
The chainnan leaned forward. "We are wasting time. :'It's important!" 'As important as the survival of the human race?" Dr. Herrin turned to the Dr. Guyton. "Is that the extent of the proposal?" "I just want to point out, again, that this also gets all the antimatter manufactured to date out of the system. But yes, that's the extent of the proposal," the anthropologist said. "Then I call for a vote."
The tally of the main committee was seven in favor, one against.
Dr. Herrin looked at the next page of her clipboard. "Very well. Prepare the catapult. Initiate the ship modifications after the cargo has been removed from the holds and put in stable orbits. We currently don't have the fuel to bring it down to the moon's surface, but it'll be safe up there until we do. As soon as the passenger bags are ready for the launch buckets and the ship is moved to the L-2 point, we set up a catcher crew. As proposed earlier, imprinting will be done after the first stage of cold sleep prep. If they wake up at the other
H E L M 7
end"-she spread her hands and exhaled-"well, they'll have religion."
After the vote, Bauer had rested his face in his hands, but he looked up at she said this. "You're not going to tell them?"
11 No," the chairman said. Bauer's face turned white. "You must! If you don't, I will!"
The chairman looked at his furious face and thought about her two daughters, now among five billion humans dead. "Consider how many lives your announcement would end. Panic leading to riots could kill us all." "Nonsense," said Bauer. "That's the sort of argument that's been used to control people through the ages. The only way I'll keep quiet is if you abandon this plan to use the imprinter."
She placed the palms of her hands together, fingers up, and bowed from the waist, "Then I'm sorry."
He frowned, puzzled. "Sorry? What do you mean? If you think for one minute that an apology will change my-"
She moved, then, forward in shikko, samurai kneewalking, skimming the floor, really, in the low gravity.
He raised his hands as she closed, uncertain, surprised. She was a small woman, unarmed, after all, and he was a large man.
She brushed her right arm against his right wrist and then pivoted, sliding beside him, faster than he could turn to follow. As he tried to twist around, she swept his right arm down with both of her hands, to the floor and back, then the edge of her left hand cut down into the back of his shoulder as she moved behind him, twisting her hips. He bent over abruptly, facedown, his own arm a crowbar levering his torso down.
She reached across the back of his head with her right hand, slid it down across the side of his face, and
8 - STEVEN GOULD
reached under, to cup his chin. Then she pulled, twisting her hips and shoulder back in one abrupt movement.
Bauer stared up at her, his torso still facing down, his neck twisted one hundred eighty degrees.
Everyone in the small chamber heard his spine snap. Dr. Herrin laid him on his back, carefully, folding his hands across his chest, then backed away, still on
her knees. She bowed again, to the body.
The rest of the committee stared, shocked, shifting their eyes between her and Bauer's lifeless form.
When Dr. Herrin finally spoke, her voice was calm. "The vote on emigration stands. I depend on you, Dr. Guyton, to handle the imprinting procedure with appropriate candor. As to my behavior in this incident "-she nodded toward Bauer's body-1 tender my immediate resignation."
She slumped then, her hands folded on her lap, her eyes downcast. In a quiet, empty voice she said, "I have betrayed my training. If the conunittee decides I should live, I would like to go with the colony."
0 N I
SHOSHIN: BEGINNER'S MIND
First there was the cyanophyta, the blue-green algae, a hundred different kinds, tailored to float at various strata of the atmosphere, to lie in puddles of water, to infest the shallow seas. They were injected into the upper atmosphere in ablative capsules that exploded when they'd sloughed off enough heat and velocity and floated on the winds.
Some varieties went extinct, never finding their needed habitat, but others thrived, harvesting carbon out of the all-too-plentiful CO 2 and releasing oxygen and, at an exponential rate, reproducing.
Next, when the temperatures began to subside, came the lichens, desert, arctic, jungle, temperate-tiny filaments of fungus surrounding algae cells. These soredium fell like fine ash, scattered through the atmosphere to fall gently to the rocky surface.
In some regions the fungus couldn't attach to the rock, or there wasn't enough water, or sunlight, or there was too high a concentration of heavy metals, or it was
10 - STEVEN GOULD
too hot, or too cold, or any of abundred other versions of just not right. But elsewhere, in the cracks, in drifts of crumbling rock, and in basins of dust, they thrived, the fungal layers absorbing minerals and water while the algae did their photosynthetic magic with C02 and sunlight.