Macrolife (17 page)

The door slid open and John Bulero stepped into the brightly lit workroom of his exemplar. Rob Wheeler was not in the large circular chamber, but the workscreen on the center desk was on, displaying a dozen mathematical functions. John went past the various Humanity II terminals to the door of the observatory. The door opened and he stepped into darkness.

His eyes adjusted as the door closed behind him, and he saw Rob leaning over a horizontal screen in the center of the room. Only two of the twenty-five screens ringing the observatory were on, showing magnified starfields; the projection space overhead was dark.

Wheeler turned a pale, white-haired profile to John and motioned for him to come closer.

Silently they looked down at the planet on the map screen: a full disk veiled in swirling white clouds, dark blue oceans, brown wrinkles of mountainous land, stretches of desert and greenery, and polar caps, dazzlingly white in the sunlight.

“I haven't seen a truly beautiful planet for over a century,” Rob said. “The last was when I was two hundred and three.”

“Beautiful and dangerous,” John said, remembering what he had been taught, “filled with disease and unpredictable processes.” He remembered when at the age often he had played in the forest near the lake in the hollow, pretending that he was lost on some far planet half a galaxy away. As he looked down now at the black grid covering the view of Lea, he thought of the glass windows he had seen in the images of old books.

Suddenly the planet was gone, and a column of light was streaming up into the dark observatory from the filtered brightness of the two suns.

“Do you know anything about this planet's history?” Wheeler asked.

“Only the name.”

“We're less than a hundred and fifty parsecs from earth's sunspace.”

“And you think there are earth colonists here?”

“We know the planet's name from scouts who have been here at various times during the last two centuries. We know something of what happened after the sacking and destruction of the partially completed macro world at Tau Ceti IV in 2331. Evidence suggests that what was left of the destroyed world was used to build a makeshift starship, which disappeared into the Praesepe cluster carrying a few thousand people. Blackfriar has evidence that a relative of his was the captain of that ship. Most of the documents we have from Tau Ceti and Centauri show that the names of Blackfriar and Bulero play important roles in the developing schisms over whether to settle natural worlds or build mobiles. There were Blackfriars and Buleros on both sides, apparently. I don't know what we can find out down there after seven hundred years.”

“I hope we don't anger them by taking the resources we need.”

“The culture here is almost nonexistent,” Rob said. “There may be no one alive.”

John was silent.

Wheeler stood up and turned to face him. “What do you think about it?”

“I don't know what to think. I'm not sure I want to join the building of the new macroworld or go with it when it's ready. What I really want is to go down and see the planet. I've waited a long time.”

“Go and observe by yourself. I'm glad you're interested.”

“Why?”

“You'll get some firsthand experience concerning an old problem, one we've never resolved.”

Wheeler had taught him everything he knew about the nature of inquiry, acquainting him with the rich spectrum of the sciences, with the basic questions of scientific philosophy, especially with problems in stellar evolution and comparative cosmology. Rob had taught him the concerns which should belong in every life, stressing the ethical procedures implicit in the honest gathering of knowledge.

Rob had been the first to discuss Samuel Bulero with him, helping him to better accept his own identity. As a clone, John Bulero was simply the twin brother of an earlier individual, no more, no less, free to follow his own path. Cloning was only one of a variety of reproductive methods available to macroworlders. Nevertheless, someone had wanted to give these Bulero genes another try. “That's true,” Wheeler had said to him a decade ago, “but the rest will be up to you.” The Buleros and Blackfriars had helped create macrolife; and they had seen to it that when a world reproduced itself, it would have a bank of genetic material from earth to draw on, as a complement to normal sexual reproduction. All the people who had dreamed of a new kind of life in those final days of earth were still alive; somewhere each of them had a twin, an individual who had been called up to live his or her permutation of the original. As Samuel Bulero was his historical brother, so he had other brothers on distant macroworlds.

“Are you interested in the solar system?” John asked.

“The star still shines, and I can't see any signs of the anomaly at this distance.”

“You want to go there, don't you?”

“I do, but I'll have to convince the Projex Council. As long as our drive systems move us at a hundred light-years a week, they'll be prudent about the energy we spend on movement. We need smaller and more efficient power sources. Even a thousandfold increase of power for our drive will only move us a small fraction of a parsec faster. We have the means in exotic forms of matter, but the engineering is a million times more difficult than fusion was a thousand years ago.”

“Do you think civilization survives in the solar system?”

“I suspect that the anomaly might have receded.”

“Do you think life has survived on earth itself?”

“Possibly.” John thought of how easily this man could inspire him about impersonal things. “If we help any natural world, it should be earth,” Wheeler said. “Does this interest you?”

“It seems worth doing.”

John followed him out into the bright workroom. Wheeler sat down behind his desk. John seated himself at one of the terminals and turned the chair around to face him.

“If you like,” Rob said, “we can work together on making a case for a return to the solar system in the near future.”

“I'd like to see Lea first,” John said.

“I'll help arrange it for you.”

“I don't want Margaret to know until I'm gone.”

“It's your business entirely. Not everyone will think you strange for wanting to see a dirtworld. We have our provincialisms, but we try not to enforce their observance. It will be mostly those who are your own age who will look down their noses at you.”

“While the older citizens will merely tolerate my odd taste.”

“We have to. It's our youth who are conservative. Don't worry, frivolity is said to return at about age five hundred.”

John laughed.

“You know,” Wheeler continued, “extended life was once regarded as a continuing old age. All kinds of dire predictions were made about the adverse effects of long life on the human mind. Few thought that creativity and vitality would increase to match the new scale of time.”

“Not everyone achieves a dynamic longevity,” John said.

“And not everyone could live a successful century before, or even a productive decade or two. Failure can't be eliminated by guarantee. It's still up to the individual, no matter how much help is given.”

That's me
, John thought. “It's a wonder humanity developed any foresight at all.”

“On earth old men became jesters, “Wheeler said. “There may be such men on Lea. I don't know what else has survived. There are no standard forms of communication that we can detect, not even radio. That by itself signals trouble; there's seven hundred years of history down there….”

John got up, feeling uneasy. “I've got to meet Margaret at the link training center.”

“But you won't—you haven't been there at all today, have you?”

“No.”

“Don't be too hard on Margaret. She's not like you. You're a healthy, relatively unmodified type. Her behavioral range was developed for long attention span, logic, a minute grasp of body language and sexuality, and emotional control. Try to understand her difficulty—in you she faces a very unpredictable person.”

“She has no imagination. I'll be glad when we go our own ways. I can't stand her impatience. She talks at me, not to me.”

“You'll be friends when you're a hundred,” Rob said. “But if you're that unhappy, go on your own, do without exemplars.” Wheeler's bushy eyebrows went up toward his white hair. John looked directly into the wide blue eyes, and for a moment the person he knew was gone. The being who confronted him was alien, projecting what seemed to be an amused empathy toward a lesser creature. John thought of the man who worked on dozens of undiscussed projects, his brain enormously magnified through the Humanity II intelligences who ordered the world for their human partners, as once nature's gods had ruled earth. John wondered why unchanged types like himself had been permitted to persist. Was it to keep a tie with natural worlds?

Rob smiled, releasing him from his gaze, and John knew how the exemplar would answer his question. Initial types, as well as innovative ones, had to be preserved as a matter of law. The worth of human adaptability and creativity could not be predicted. His life was his own, his own burden, to do with as he pleased. But what could he ever do to please or benefit the world around him? He felt a general, shapeless hunger in himself, a vague devotion which seemed directed at nothing more than itself; there were answers to questions which he could not even put into words.

He turned and the door opened for him. He stepped out into the passageway, feeling ignorant and afraid.

Level six was dark as he neared the apartment. Half the sky was alive with the bright stars of Praesepe, half with the glow of more distant suns. The curving plain of spaced dwelling columns held up the night sky. Sturdy oaks and white birches from earth rustled in the gentle breeze.

He passed three olive-skinned males sitting on a bench near the column entrance. He did not know them, but they glanced at him with their large brown eyes. He felt hostility toward them as he went through the archway. Tall, black-haired, graceful, they were the true macroworlders. He was an intruder from the past, and not even a copy of a pioneer, but a shadow of one who had stayed behind.

He turned left and walked around the curve to his apartment at the end. The door slid open and he stepped inside.

Margaret Toren-Bulero stood in the center of the living room. He stopped and looked at her as if she were a stranger. They had shared this apartment for more than a year now, ever since he had left the dorms on level five. He remembered their closeness of six months before as he looked at the bundle of her long black hair tied up on the back of her head. Her skin had a tendency to lose its tan and become very soft and white. She was not a clone of one person, but a mixture of materials from Janet Bulero and Margot Toren, with modifications. She looked back at him without blinking.

“You were to meet me,” she said.

“I didn't want to.” He resented the view of him which her age gave her.

“You've neglected your Humanity II seminars.”

“That's my business, isn't it?”

“You'll fall behind.”

“I don't care, right now. Can't you leave me alone?”

She did not react for a moment. “Let's make love. It will relax you.”

He shook his head. “I'm going down to Lea.”

She stepped nearer and looked directly at him. She was thin and graceful, making him feel crude in his stockiness.

“Whatever for?” she asked.

“To see…how they live, what it's like.”

“You really don't know why you want to go, do you?”

“I want to see a natural world.”

“They're creatures. Life is an endless war. Do you want to see that?”

“I have a right to go.”

“I don't recommend it. You're easily impressed.”

“I won't get another chance very soon.”

“You'll handle it better later, not now.”

He remembered how much he had needed her once, how happy he had been when she had taken him from the loneliness of the dorms.

“I wish to dissolve our bond,” he said.

“You're upset. Think about it later.” She tried to embrace him.

He pushed her away and turned to leave, knowing that he could never live in this apartment again. Margaret was a manager, leaving him nothing for himself; she meant well, but she could not understand what he wanted, especially if he himself did not know. It would not be fair to stay with her.

She was silent as he went out the door.

The nearest watch held only a dozen people, though it could accommodate three hundred. Lea swam in the darkness on the screen. John sat alone in the front row.

The view changed and he was looking into a conference pit. Franklyn Blackfriar, a clone of Orton Blackfriar, sat between council-men Stav Rees and Miklos Anastasian. The four-hundred-year-old first councilman scratched the black stubble of hair on his scalp and waited for the report to begin. John knew him as the most respected first councilman who had ever held the office. He would retire for decades, but something would always draw him back into public planning.

Rees and Anastasian were scarcely half Blackfriar's age, but he liked to pick younger people for his administrations. John knew them both from the engineering school, where they had been his instructors. Both were at the head of the action to build a new mobile.

Rees summarized the resource-gathering procedures, already in progress. It was easier to bring materials up from Lea than to send out foraging vessels to hook and bring back asteroid fragments; before the advent of large-scale gravities, the task of bringing up resources from a planet would have been too large even for atomic boosters, but now entire mountains could be floated off using a portable generator, while smaller loads of scarcer materials would be brought up by shuttle haulers.

Miklos Anastasian said a few words about security precautions. As long as the macroworld stayed in a sunward parallel orbit, directly in line with the planet, an undetected boarding attempt would be impossible. The accidental transfer of an unknown disease would be minimized through strict procedures, but preliminary investigations had revealed nothing dangerous. The first scouts had concluded that there was little possiblity of any danger from Lea's surface. Its human population was made up of scattered tribes, too backward to have an opinion about the macroworld's presence; few, if any, would even understand what it was that had come into their sky.

“When will the two outer shells be ready?” Blackfriar asked.

“We can separate the two outer shells almost immediately,” Rees said.

“Where will you go when all is ready?” Blackfriar asked. He seemed to have little interest in the project, but he would go through all the public hearings and administrative functions connected with the process of world reproduction.

Rees started to answer again, but Anastasian cut in. “Maybe one of the globular clusters, assuming we have a faster drive soon. Planetary civilizations might have developed favorably there, easily spanning the closer spaces between the suns to achieve an optimum distribution of population. We may find a great diversity in a small space. I think the isolation of cultures in the spiral arms may be a grave handicap to their progress. A culture must limit energy consumption and population at its most productive stage of development, when the momentum of cumulative innovation is just beginning to produce decisive breakthroughs; the culture must reach beyond its planet or die.”

“Or fall into a marginal existence, like Lea,” Rees added.

John decided not to hear the rest. He had expected Blackfriar to contribute more to the discussion. What would the councilman think of his desire to visit Lea? Their meetings had always made John feel that Blackfriar was taking a personal interest in him, that the way to friendship was always open.

He felt a growing sense of hope as he left the hall. He would go see Blackfriar and make his own arrangements to visit Lea. Maybe Blackfriar would understand what he felt.

 

“Go,” Franklyn Blackfriar said. “Go right away.”

John stood in front of the first councilman's huge desk.

“Well, sit down. I've been waiting for you to come and see me.”

Blackfriar rapped his desk with his knuckles as John sat down. “Old earth teak. There's nothing like it, not even mirrored bulerite.” He paused. “Why do you want to go?”

“I can't give a reason—I just want to see.”

“You realize,” Blackfriar said, leaning back, “that a macroworlder is a powerful individual on any dirtworld? We lose a lot if we lose one of our own. Afraid?”

“I don't think this world is a threat to us.”

“You've got an idea about helping out down there?”

“I don't know—I don't know anything. I want to see.”

“Good. What does Margaret think?”

“We're dissolving our bond.”

Blackfriar shrugged. “Nothing unusual. Maybe one day your experience may be useful. So few of us have any direct experience of natural worlds.”

John looked directly at him. To be accepted so casually was disturbing.

“Have you talked with Wheeler?” John asked.

Blackfriar smiled and leaned forward. “Of course I have. You're going—but see the medics. There are a number of tricky things you should know about dirtworlds.”

“I will.” Blackfriar's breezy sympathy had disoriented him.

“I know that look, John, I've worn it myself. You're distrustful of me. Don't bother answering. I don't need to confirm what I know. Let me tell you what it means to live a long time. It's the younger people who are most rigid, because they ask that things go one way—their way and no other, according to some idea of proper development which they think just. They exclude and exclude, concentrating all their skills on their desire, whatever that may be. And they often get what they want. That's more true in our social system, but it happened surprisingly often in past cultures. Nothing can stand forever against that kind of patience and persistence, because when the one chance for success comes along, the youth is there and waiting, ready to seize it. And he was there all the other times when the chance was not there. That one time is all the time he needs. That's why youth has a historical reputation for innovation and change.”

“What's your point?”

“Don't you see? Youth's approach is narrow. The older you get, the more innovative you will become, at least in our way of life. You'll begin to see how long it takes to do anything really well, and you'll know that you have the time, if you're patient. You'll take the time to do more than one thing well. On dirtworlds young and old were rigid. The young person had only one thing to add; the old, one thing to preserve—the things he learned when he was young. There was no time to do more, no energy. So the generations struggled hand over hand, unaware of their closeness, blind for lack of life and vitality. They could not have what we have, what still lies before you.”

“I know all that,” John said.

Blackfriar got up from behind his desk and stretched his huge frame. Then he came around into the center of the room. John stood up. Blackfriar paused and looked down at him. “John, what you want is vague enough to intrigue me. You want to go and poke around in places. Go see Miklos Anastasian; he'll help you get down. Rees will be supervising the final separation of our outer shells, but Miklos will be going dirtside. I think you and he will get along. Eventually an investigative team will go down and make some sort of historical report. I have a lot of interest in that. But for the moment we'll send you.” He smiled again. “Right now I have to go and resolve a bitter feud in the outer levels. Seems the new world is carrying off equipment they're not supposed to have. Maybe someday research will stop complaining to me and produce some of the dreams I've been ordering for more than a century.”

“What dreams?”

“Walk out with me part way and I'll tell you,” Blackfriar said as he led the way out of the office.