Catastrophe Practice (31 page)

But if there is a code —

The message would also be a story?

A Novel

The Professor walked to the steps of the Old Science Buildings. A tomato hit him on his coat. Watching a seed run down he thought — Take it apart, and hold it, and throw it back at you, children: would you become no more than shadows, and it would be your sun.

There were students each side of the steps to the Old Science Theatre. They were raising their fists and shouting. People with the Professor were trying to speak into his ear. He thought — I am Caesar, entering the senate, beneath the portico where starlings sat. He went up the steps between angry fists and the shouting. He thought — What if the conspirators knew they were playing only to themselves?

The theatre was a lecture hall with the seats going up so steeply that the people at the top seemed to be on a seige machine. Most of the seats were filled; there were desks in front of each row; the audience appeared cut off at the waist like busts. The Professor thought — I am in a mausoleum, trapped by these our memorials. The small rostrum, with its lectern, seemed to be underneath the seats. He thought — It is in our heads that we can get out, with one great jump.

The Professor stood at the lectern and laid out his notes. The people who had come in with him were settling down in chairs at the front of the auditorium. The students who had been shouting remained outside. The notes for his lecture were headed
Selection: Natural or Unnatural
. He thought — the adjectives, following the noun, are the baying of hounds outside. The doors of the theatre were being closed: men with long poles wound up windows. The shouting had turned into a chanting: the eroding of wind and rain. The people on chairs in front were crossing and uncrossing their legs. The Professor
thought — It was his colleagues who killed Caesar: the crowd, with its tomatoes, only wanted his sacred heart.

The Professor was a brown-faced, thick-set man with grey hair like a laurel wreath. When he began his lecture he spoke in the fiat, quiet voice by which he hoped sometimes that his words might fly: an almost hesitant voice, but which could dip its wings down into the wind and then up, floating: neither too little nor too much or it might stall: himself at the controls but hardly touching them: the wind carrying him.

I have called this lecture
Selection: Natural or Unnatural
and the noun is first because this is the fact and the adjectives are to some extent fiction. Evolution through selection is a scientific fact: there is a sense in which this process can no longer be said to be natural. Men can, and do — at least they think they do — tamper with processes of selection. This ability has come about as a result of one of the products of natural selection — man's consciousness.

The chanting from outside had grown quieter. The Professor thought — If it dies, will there be enough wind for my words to fly? A dark-haired girl in the second row was staring at him intently. He thought — She is not with her lover?

Consciousness occurred as a result of innumerable small mutations and selections. Such mutant structures as were fitted to their environment lived, those which were not did not. The mutations were by chance: the processes of selection were inevitable. By environment I mean not just the outside circumstances in which an organism might live, but the circumstances in which a piece of information within an organism might find itself encouraged or not to live. There is in this sense an environment inside as well as outside —

The girl in the second row was remarkable not only, he thought, because he knew her well — and she was intelligent, pretty — but because with her air of outward-turned reflection
she reminded him, strikingly, of someone at the centre of his past life; in her student's role listening to him so intently; someone who, he thought, should also be in this audience; who had been as pretty once: a line thus going between the two of them in his mind. And then in fact he did find her, this other one, sitting at the back of the auditorium now and smiling down; an elderly lady with a pudding-basin hair-cut: he thought — Like Cleopatra. And these connections between the three — himself, the old woman, and the young girl in the second row — in his mind, in the lecture theatre — all seemed to be taking place in some system of recognition; not belonging either to one or to the other but in between them, the inside and the outside worlds.

I am not speaking here of the possibilities of tinkering with the genetic code. As members of the audience will well know, there has in recent years been some genetic manipulation in order to produce, in laboratory conditions, substances that are difficult to come by naturally. This has been useful for the purpose of experiment. But I do not think that molecular genetic engineering, however useful in such fields, will in the foreseeable future be able to play the part that is sometimes imagined for it — that of being able to alter, or to improve, the patterns of our species. There are technical reasons for this; as well as the commonplace difficulty of deciding what might, or might not, be an improvement —

The chanting outside had ceased. But now there had begun a shuffling, a turning of heads, within the hall itself; as if the audience might be a school of fishes; this in response to a tapping, a scraping noise, from one of the high-up windows. Something like the head of a dinosaur seemed to be trying to poke through. There was a bang; then a slight tinkle. The window was being forced. What came through, after a time, was the nozzle of a loudspeaker.

Man evolved through chance mutations in the genetic
code; also through the fact that certain mutant structures occasionally had advantage in a changing environment over others that had previously been more fitted. All evolution depends on the juxtaposition of these two factors — the operation of chance, and the operation of environment so that some results of chance rather than others live. It is in this latter area that men in theory at least might now possess some organising ability —

The Professor was smiling: the head of the loudspeaker leaned so drunkenly! The old woman at the back, like Cleopatra, was smiling too. He thought — I have been so lucky with those I love! The young girl in the second row still frowned intently. He thought — She will learn that connections, for their advantage, are often witty.

The qualities of imagination and intelligence in a modern society — those qualities which might be thought necessary for the survival of such a society — while being admittedly factors of personal success are still in no way factors of genetic success: the imaginative and self-reflective, that is, are not those, statistically, who do most to reproduce. In fact, the opposite is the case; and it is modern science, with the help that it offers to the genetically unfortunate, that has helped to bring this about. This is not to say that this is not correct —

The loudspeaker was making a crackling noise. The Professor had gone on talking because, he thought, there was a better chance now that his words might fly: the disturbance in the audience was growing like a wind. There was a man with a long pole stretching up towards the window: the Professor thought — Like St George: but is not the dragon, like a woman, now on top?

But just as there is nothing that can be done about improvement of the species by genetic engineering, so, I believe, is there little more that can be done, in direct
ways at least, by social engineering. This has been attempted, up to now, so far as it can be, by good and efficient people. But the benefit, the learning, that has accrued socially does not of course transfer itself to the genetic code —

He had been leafing ahead through the pages of his notes. He thought — I am stalling: I must hang on: I want it to be over: they must hurry. Then — It is right, of course, that they should object to what I say?

But since it is man's genetic equipment that seems to contain, whatever the social conditions, some — I should not say flaw — but some piece of information or lack of it that does not allow a person to be as it were in a good and harmonious working relationship with himself —

He thought — Please God, let them start. Then — But some will hear what I say?

— which seems to result not just in his capacity to blunder but in his feeling at home as it were in his blundering —

The loudspeaker began to play Beethoven. The Professor thought — Now at last I can fly — cry — a piece of the Third Symphony, was it? dropping down, climbing — da da di dum dum, di dum dum — a formulation of — what — beauty? violence? order? knocking out thought. The students had pushed the loudspeaker through the window. They were trying to drown him: to prevent anyone hearing what he had to say. He thought — But of course, this is what I am saying: that what I say should be permitted to grow, or not, in secret.

In the past an infirm species, ill-fitted to itself or to its environment, has died. Such a catastrophe may, indeed, happen to us humans as a species. And there may then be a chance for a more fitted strain to grow. On the other hand it has been suggested that man's consciousness
might be used for the planned control or sterilisation even of the genetically unfortunate — so that we can make of ourselves a strain more fitted. But here — apart again from the difficulties, impossibilities even, of deciding what should be encouraged — it is a fact that our modern humanitarian ethic would prevent any such possibility, and of course rightly; for humanitarian ethic is as much the product of human evolution as is scientific understanding; and it can no more be jettisoned in the name of science than can the process of scientific method itself —

Nothing of what he was saying was getting through. The music banged on beautifully: like a flood, a fire: enabling men to die, he thought, grandly as if on an ice-cap coming down from the Pole. The unity that there had been in the room — the audience's heads turning from himself towards the window like fishes — was now broken: people were standing, sitting, facing this way and that: they were like random molecules of gas, he thought: but broken up by — what? — the power, the orderliness, of music? He thought — Men played Beethoven, Mozart, before and after putting others into gas ovens.

Humans cannot tinker with the genetic code. They cannot hope for genetic improvement directly through social effort. They cannot, being sensible, plan for social or ethical catastrophe. Yet it seems necessary to have some hope of genetic adaptation for our species at a time when the split between what we know and what we can handle seems likely to destroy us —

There were people pushing to get out of the door of the hall. The door seemed blocked. St George, with his lance, was making little headway against the dragon. The Professor looked up at the old woman like Cleopatra. She had a hand over her mouth and was rocking to and fro. He remembered — Sometimes she seemed to laugh so much that her face was pulled into different patterns. He looked at the girl in the second row.

But there is still something we can do —

A boy had appeared at the very top of the auditorium. He was tall, with fair hair. He was at the top of one of the gangways near the old woman like Cleopatra. He did not seem particularly interested in the music — or the lecture. He seemed to be looking for someone in the audience.

There might be encouraged some environment in the mind by which the results of one chance mutation rather than those of others might live —

The boy was coming down the steps. The Professor thought — He is looking for the girl: between the random molecules of gas and the noise like a sun-shaft: between angels and pillars, for that fond non-virgin —

I say ‘in the mind' because it is here that evolution has most recently taken place and it is here it would seem most likely to take place further —

The loudspeaker was being pulled away from the window from outside. The audience seemed in danger of settling down. He thought — It is I who must hurry.

An environment that would encourage a new type of thinking, person, piece of DNA: that would look on not only the world but the way we look on the world, and thus affect this —

The scene in front of him did indeed seem to be some model in reality of what he was saying: about himself, the boy, the girl, the old woman like Cleopatra: to do both with himself and with what was happening to the others: the boy searching for the girl; the girl still trying to catch his, the Professor's words; the old woman laughing: all forming some exact brightness within the uproar —

The music stopped.

He began to collect up his papers.

The boy with fair hair had reached the front of the auditorium. He was looking at the girl in the second row. The girl was staring at the Professor. The old woman at the back seemed to be picking up her bag.

He thought — Of course, all this would be in code —

Then — But who will get the message?

With the ceasing of the music, the audience was settling down as if to continue to listen to his lecture.

One sheet of his notes had slipped off the lectern and had flown over the edge of the stage like a bird.

The window was closing. There were faint cries from outside. The space in the front of the auditorium was being occupied by large men with blue suits and ties.

Someone had stepped on to the rostrum and was wiping at the tomato on the Professor's coat. He thought — My sacred heart!

The girl in the second row was picking up the page of his notes which had landed close to her.

The boy with fair hair had turned and was making a gesture to the Professor, as if he were telling him that he wanted to speak to him.

The old lady had gone.

The Professor, with his notes, stepped down from the rostrum. He walked towards the door into the courtyard.