Текст книги "Cyteen "

"This is part of my work," maman said, and Ari, walking with her hand in maman's, not because she was a baby, but because the machinery was huge and things moved and everything was dangerous, looked around at the shiny steel things they called womb-tanks, each one as big as a bus, and asked, loudly:

"Where are the babies?"

"Inside the tanks," maman said. An azi came up and maman said: "This is my daughter Ari. She's going to take a look at a few of the screens."

"Yes, Dr. Strassen," the azi said. Everyone talked loud. "Hello, Ari."

"Hello," she yelled up at the azi, who was a woman. And held on to maman's hand, because maman was following the azi down the long row.

It was only another desk, after all, and a monitor screen. But maman said: "What's the earliest here?"

"Number ten's a week down."

"Ari, can you count ten tanks down? That's nearly to the wall."

Ari looked. And counted. She nodded.

"All right," maman said. "Mary, let's have a look. —Ari, Mary here is going to show you the baby inside number ten, right here on the screen."

"Can't we look inside?"

"The light would bother the baby," maman said. "They're like birthday presents. You can't open them till it's the baby's birthday. All right?"

That was funny. Ari laughed and plumped herself down on the seat. And what came on the screen was a red little something.

"That's the baby," maman said, and pointed. "Right there."

"Ugh." It clicked with something she had seen somewhere. Which was probably tape. It was a kind of a baby.

"Oh, yes. Ugh. All babies look that way when they're a week old. It takes them how many weeks to be born?"

"Forty and some," Ari said. She remembered that from down deep too.

"Are they all like this?"

"What's closest to eight weeks, Mary?"

"Four and five are nine," Mary said.

"That's tanks four and five, Ari. Look where they are, and we'll show you—which one, Mary?"

"Number four, sera. Here we are."

"It's still ugly," Ari said. "Can we see a pretty one?"

"Well, let's just keep hunting."

The next was better. The next was better still. Finally the babies got so big they were too big to see all of. And they moved around. Ari was excited, really excited, because maman said they were going to birth one.

There were a lot of techs when they got around to that. Maman took firm hold of Ari's shoulders and made her stand right in front of her so she would be able to see; and told her where to look, right there, right in that tank.

"Won't it drown?" Ari asked.

"No, no, babies live in liquid, don't they? Now, right now, the inside of the tank is doing just what the inside of a person does when birth happens. It's going to push the baby right out. Like muscles, only this is all pumps. It's really going to bleed, because there's a lot of blood going in and out of the pumps and it's going to break some of the vessels in the bioplasm when it pushes like that."

"Does the baby have a cord and everything?"

"Oh, yes, babies have to have. It's a real one. Everything is real right up to the bioplasm: that's the most complicated thing—it can really grow a blood system. Watch out now, see the light blink. That means the techs should get ready. Here it comes. There's its head. That's the direction babies are supposed to face."

"Sploosh!" Ari cried, and clapped her hands when it hit the tank. And stood still as it started swimming and the nasty stuff went through the water. "Ugh."

But the azi techs got it out of there, and got the cord, and it did go on moving. Ari stood up on her toes trying to see as they took it over to the counter, but Mary the azi made them stop to show her the baby making faces. It was a boy baby.

Then they washed it and powdered it and wrapped it up, and Mary held it and rocked it.

"This is GY-7688," maman said. "His name is August. He's going to be one of our security guards when he grows up. But he'll be a baby for a long time yet. When you're twelve, he'll be as old as you are now."

Ari was fascinated. They let her wash her hands and touch the baby. It waved a fist at her and kicked and she laughed out loud, it was so funny.

"Say goodbye," maman said then. "Thank Mary."

"Thank you," Ari said, and meant it. It was fun. She hoped they could come back again.

"Did you like the lab?" maman asked.

"I liked it when the baby was born."

"Ollie was born like that. He was born right in this lab."

She could not imagine Ollie tiny and funny like that. She did not want to think of Ollie like that. She wrinkled her nose and made Ollie all right in her mind again.

Grown up and handsome in his black uniform.

"Sometimes CITs are born out of the tanks," maman said. "If for some reason their mamans can't carry them. The tanks can do that. Do you know the difference between an azi and a CIT, when they're born the same way?"

That was a hard question. There were a lot of differences. Some were rules and some were the way azi were.

"What's that?" she asked maman.

"How old were you when you had tape the first time?"

"I'm six."

"That's right. And you had your first tape the day after your birthday. Didn't scare you, did it?"

"No," she said; and shook her head so her hair flew. Because she liked to do that. Maman was slow with her questions and she got bored in between.

"You know when August will have his first tape?"

"When?"

"Today. Right now. They put him in a cradle and it has a kind of a tape going, so he can hear it."

She was impressed. Jealous, even. August was a threat if he was going to be that smart.

"Why didn't I do that?"

"Because you were going to be a CIT. Because you have to learn a lot of things the old-fashioned way. Because tapes are good, but if you've got a maman or a papa to take care of you, you learn all kinds of things August won't learn until he's older. CITs get a head start in a way. Azi learn a lot about how to be good and how to do their jobs, but they're not very good at figuring out what to do with things they've never met before. CITs are good at taking care of emergencies. CITs can make up what to do. They learn that from their mamans. Tape-learning is good, but it isn't everything. That's why maman tells you to pay attention to what you see and hear. That's why you're supposed to learn from that first, so you know tape isn't as important as your own eyes and ears. If August had a maman to take him home today he'd be a CIT."

"Why can't Mary be his maman?"

"Because Mary has too many kids to take care of. She has five hundred every year. Sometimes more than that. She couldn't do all that work. So the tape has to do it. That's why azi can't have mamans. There just aren't enough to go around."

"Icould take August."

"No, you couldn't. Mamans have to be grown up. I'dhave to take him home, and he'd have to sleep in your bed and share your toys and have dirty diapers and cry a lot. And you'd have to share maman with him forever and ever. You can't send a baby back just because you get tired of him. Would you like to have him take half your room and maman and Nelly and Ollie have to take care of him all the time? —because he'd be the baby then and he'd have to have all maman's time."

"No!" That was not a good idea. She grabbed onto maman's hand and made up her mind no baby was going to sneak in and take half of everything. Sharing with nasty friends was bad enough.

"Come on," maman said, and took her outside, in the sun, and into the garden where the fish were. Ari looked in her pants-pockets, but there was no crumb of bread or anything. Nelly had made her put on clean.

"Have you got fish-food?"

"No," maman said, and patted the rock she sat on. "Come sit by maman, Ari. Tell me what you think about the babies."

Lessons. Ari sighed and left the fish that swam up under the lilies; she squatted down on a smaller rock where she could see maman's face and leaned her elbows on her knees.

"What do you think about them?"

"They're all right."

"You know Ollie was born there."

"Is that baby going to be another Ollie?"

"You know he can't. Why?"

She screwed up her face and thought. "He's GY something and Ollie's AO. He's not even an Alpha."

"That's right. That's exactly right. You're very smart."

She liked to hear that. She fidgeted.

"You know, you were born in that room, Ari."

She heard that again in her head. And was not sure maman was not teasing her. She looked at maman, trying to figure out if it was a game. It didn't looklike a game.

"Maman couldn't carry you. Maman's much too old. Maman's been on rejuv for years and years and she can't have babies anymore. But the tanks can. So she told Mary to make a special baby. And maman was there at the tank when it was birthed, and maman picked it up out of the water, and that was you, Ari."

She stared at maman. And tried to put herself in that room and in that tank, and be that baby Mary had picked up. She felt all different. She felt like she was different from herself. She did not know what to do about it.

Maman held her hands out. "Do you want maman to hold you, sweet? I will."

Yes, she wanted that. She wanted to be little and fit on maman's lap, and she tried, but she hurt maman, she was so big, so she just tucked up beside maman on the rock and felt big and clumsy while maman hugged her and rocked her. But it felt safer.

"Maman loves you, sweet. Maman truly does. There's nothing wrong at all in being born out of that room. You're the best little girl maman could have. I wouldn't trade you for anybody."

"I'm still yours."

Maman was not going to answer/maman was, so fast a change it scared her till maman said: "You're still mine, sweet."

She did not know why her heart was beating so hard. She did not know why it felt like maman was not going to say that at first. That scared her more than anything. She was glad maman had her arms around her. She was cold.

"I told you not everybody has a papa. But you did, Ari. His name was James Carnath. That's why Amy's your cousin."

"Amy's my cousin?" She was disgusted. People had cousins. It meant they were related. Nasty old Amelie Carnath was not anybody she wanted to be related to.

"Where is my papa?"

"Dead, sweet. He died before you were born."

"Couldn't Ollie be my father?"

"Ollie can't, sweet. He's on rejuv too."

"He doesn't have white hair."

"He dyes it, the same as I do."

That was an awful shock. She couldn't think of Ollie being old like maman. Ollie was young and handsome.

"I want Ollie to be my papa."

Maman made that upset-feeling again. She felt it in maman's arms. In the way maman breathed. "Well, it was James Carnath. He was a scientist like maman. He was very smart. That's where you get half your smart, you know. You know when you're going on rejuv and you know you might want a baby later you have to put your geneset in the bank so it's there after you can't make a baby anymore. Well, that was how you could be started even if your papa died a long time ago. And there you waited, in the genebank, all the years until maman was ready to take care of a baby."

"I wish you'd done it sooner," Ari said. "Then you wouldn't be so old."

Maman cried.

And she did, because maman was unhappy. But maman kissed her and called her sweet, and said she loved her, so she guessed it was as all right as it was going to get.

She thought about it a lot. She had always thought she came out of maman. It was all right if maman wanted her to be born from the tanks. It didn't make her an azi. Maman saw to that.

It was nice to be born where Ollie was born. She liked that idea. She didn't care about whoever James Carnath was. He was Carnath.Ugh. Like Amy.

She thought when Ollie was a baby he would have had black hair and he would be prettier than August was.

She thought when she grew up to be as old as maman she would have her own Ollie. And she would have a Nelly.

But not a Phaedra. Phaedra bossed too much.

You didn't have to have azi if you didn't want them. You had to order them or they didn't get born.

That, for Phaedra, who tattled on her. She would get August instead when he grew up, and he would be Security in their hall, and say good morning, serato her just like Security did to maman.

She would have a Grant too. With red hair. She would dress him in black the way a lot of azi did and he would be very handsome. She did not know what he would do, but she would like to have an azi with red hair all the same.

She would be rich like maman.

She would be beautiful.

She would fly in the plane and go to the city and she would buy lots and lots of pretty clothes and jewels like maman's, so when they went to New Year they would make everybody say how beautiful they all were.

She would find Valery and tell him come back. And sera Schwartz too.

They would all be happy.

Verbal Text from:

PATTERNS OF GROWTH

A Tapestudy in Genetics: #1

"An Interview with Ariane Emory": pt. 2

Reseune Educational Publications: 8970-8768-1 approved for 80+

Q: Dr. Emory, we have time perhaps for a few more questions, if you wouldn't mind.

A: Go ahead.

Q: You're one of the Specials. Some people say that you may be one of the greatest minds that's ever lived, in the class of da Vinci, Einstein, and Bok. How do you feel about that comparison?

A: I would like to have known any one of them. I think it would be interesting. I think I can guess your next question, by the way.

Q: Oh?

A: Ask it.

Q: How do you compare yourself to other people?

A: Mmmn. That's not the one. Other people. I'm not sure I know. I live a very cloistered life. I have great respect for anyone who can drive a truck in the outback or pilot a starship. Or negotiate the Novgorod subway, [laughter] I suppose that I could. I've never tried. But life is always complex. I'm not sure whether it takes more for me to plot a genotype than for someone of requisite ability to do any of those things I find quite daunting.

Q: That's an interesting point. But do you think driving a truck is equally valuable? Should we appoint Specials for that ability? What makes you important?

A: Because I have a uniqueset of abilities. No one else can do what I do. That's what a Special is.

Q: How does it feel to be a Special?

A: That's very close to the question I thought you'd ask. I can tell you being a Special is a lot like being a Councillor or holding any office: very little privacy, very high security, more attention than seems to make sense.

Q: Can you explain that last—than seems to make sense?

A: [laughter] A certain publication asked me to detail a menu of my favorite foods. A reporter once asked me whether I believed in reincarnation. Do these things make sense? I'm a psychsurgeon and a geneticist and occasionally a philosopher, in which consideration the latter question actually makes more sense to me than the first, but what in hell does either one matter to the general public? More than my science, you say? No. What the reporters are looking for is an equation that finds some balance between my psyche and their demographically ideal viewer—who is a myth and a reality: what they ask may bore everyone equally by pleasing no one exactly, but never mind: which brings us finally to the question I expect you're going to ask.

Q: That's very disconcerting.

A: Ask it. I'll tell you if we've found it yet.

Q: All right. I think we've gotten there. Is this it? What do you know that no one else does?

A: Oh, I like that better. What do I know? That's interesting. No one's ever put it that way before. Shall I tell you the question they always ask? What itfeels like to have a Special's ability. What do I know is a much wiser question. What I feel, I'll answer that quite briefly: the same as anyone—who is isolate, different, and capable of understanding the reason for the isolation and the difference.

What do I know? I know that I am relatively unimportant and my work is vastly important. That's the thing the interviewer missed, who asked me what I eat. My preference in wines is utter trivia, unless you're interested in my personal biochemistry, whichdoes interest me, and does matter, but certainly that has very little to do with an article on famous people and food, whatever that means. If that writer discovered a true connection between genius and cheeses, I am interested, and I want to interview him.

Fortunately my staff protects me against the idly curious. The state set me apart because in the aggregate the state, thepeople, if you will, know that given the freedom to work, I will work, and work for the sake of my work, because I am a monomaniac. Because I do have that emotional dimension the other reporters were trying to reach, I do have an aesthetic sense about what I do, and it applies to what one very ancient Special called the pursuit of Beauty– I think everyone can understand that, on some level. On whatever level. That ancient equated it with Truth. I call it Balance. I equate it with Symmetry. That's the nature of a Special, that's what you're really looking for: a Special's mind works in abstracts that transcend the limitations of any existing language. A Special has the Long View, and equally well the Wide View, that embraces more than any single human word will embrace, simply because communicative language is the property of the masses. And the Word, the Word with a capital W, that the Special sees, understands, comprehends in the root sense of the term, is a Word outside the experience of anyone previous. So he calls it Beauty. Or Truth. Or Balance or Symmetry. Frequently he expresses himself through the highly flexible language of mathematics; or if his discipline does not express itself readily in that mode, he has to create a special meaning for certain words within the context of his work and attempt to communicate in the semantic freight his language has accumulated for centuries. My language is partly mathematical, partly biochemical, partly semantics: I study biochemical systems—human beings—which react predictably on a biochemical level to stimuli passing through a system of receptors—hardware—of biochemically determined sensitivity; through a biochemical processor of biochemically determined efficiency—hardware again—dependent on a self-programming system which is also biochemical, which produces a uniquely tailored software capable of receiving information from another human being with a degree of specificity limited principally by its own hardware, its own software, and semantics. We haven't begun to speak of the hardware and software of the second human being. Nor have we addressed the complex dimension of culture or the possibility of devising a mathematics for social systems, the games statisticians and demographers play on their level and I play on mine. I will tell you that I leave much of the work with microstructures to researchers under my direction and I have spent more of my time in thinking than I have in the laboratory. I am approaching a degree of order in that thought that I can only describe as a state of simplicity. A very wide simplicity. Things which did not seem to be related, are related. The settling of these things into order is a pleasurable sensation that increasingly lures the thinker into dimensions that have nothing to do with the senses. Attaching myself to daily life is increasingly difficult and I sometimes find myself needing that, the flesh needs affirmation, needs sensation—because otherwise I do not, personally, exist. And I exist everywhere.

At the end I will speak one Word, and it will concern humanity. I don't know if anyone will understand it. I have a very specific hope that someone will. This is the emotional dimension. But if I succeed, my successor will do something I can only see in the distance: in a sense, Iam doing it, because getting this far is part of it. But the flesh needs rest from visions. Lives are short-term, even one extended by rejuv. I give you Truth. Someone, someday, will understand my notes.

That is myself, speaking the language not even another Special can understand, because his Beauty is different, and proceeds along another course. If you're religious you may think we have seen the same thing. Or that we must lead to the same thing. I am not, myself, certain. We are God's dice. To answer still another Special.

Now I've given you more than I've given any other interviewer, because you asked the best question. I'm sorry I can't answer in plain words. By now, the average citizen is capable of understanding Plato and some may know Einstein. The majority of scientists have yet to grasp Bok. You will know, in a few centuries, what I know right now. But humanity in the macrocosm is quite wise: because in the mass you are as visionary as any Special, you give me my freedom, and I prove the validity of your judgment.

Q: You can't interpret this thing you see.

A: If I could, I would. If words existed to describe it, I would not be what I am.

Q: You've served for decades in the legislature. Isn't that a waste? Isn't that a job someone else could do?

A: Good question. No. Not in this time. Not in this place. The decisions we make are very important. The events of the last five decades prove that. And I need contact with reality. I benefit in—a spiritual way, if you like. In a way that affects my personal biochemical systems and keeps them in healthy balance. It's not good for the organism, to let the abstract grow without checking the perceptions. In simpler terms, it's a remedy against intellectual isolation and a service I do my neighbors. An abstract mathematician probably doesn't have anywhere near our most junior councillor's understanding of the interstellar futures market or the pros and cons of a medical care system for merchanters on Union stations. By the very nature of my work, I do have that understanding; and I have a concern for human society. I know people criticize the Council system as wasting the time of experts. If providing expert opinion to the society in which we all live is a waste of time, then what good are we? Of course certain theorists can't communicate out-field. But certain ones can, and should. You've seen the experts disagree. Sometimesit's because one of us fails to understand something in another field. Very often it's because the best thinking in two fields fails to reconcile a question of practical effects, and that is precisely the point in which the people doing the arguing had better be experts: some very useful interdisciplinary understandings are hammered out in Council and in the private meetings, a fusion of separate bodies of knowledge that actually sustains this unique social experiment we call Union.

That's one aspect of the simplicity Ican explain simply: the interests of all humans are interlocked, my own included, and politics is no more than a temporal expression of social mathematics.

CHAPTER 6