A Reasonable World

16

Once again Sea Venture was floating in the Pacific, this time in the Kuroshio Current, seven hundred miles west-southwest of Manila.

The whole vast circle of the ocean was empty except for scattered lumps of tar and a few dead fish.

In her office on the Signal Deck, Dr. Owen contemplated a transparent computer model of CV in the holotube. Little motes of color were slowly moving in the corridors and compartments. Dark blue dots of teachers and violet dots of psychologists were in the classrooms. Yellow dots of kitchen crew drifted in the cafeterias along with the green dots of adult inmates having their breakfasts; brown dots of maintenance workers moved like corpuscles in the corridors. Violet dots of scientists were in the laboratories; below, red dots of experimental subjects waited in their cells. There was even a dot for Owen herself; like everyone else now, she wore an unbreakable transponder bracelet that told the computer where she was at every moment. The same device was being used in prisons on the mainland and in high-security defense plants; it had simplified control and monitoring problems enormously. The “Green Hornet” problem would never recur; the Wackenhut people had practically nothing to do apart from escorting experimental subjects to and from the labs.

Detection devices now kept CV almost clear of symbionts except in the experimental areas. If one was found in a detainee, which almost never happened, they would restrain the person and take them to a holding cell; if it was in a staff member or employee, they would simply destroy it, since the rat breeding program gave them all they needed. Yes, and the human breeding program was coming along very satisfactorily.

Data flowed up the flatscreen at her command. Mortality in the 11-15 and 16-20 cohorts was up by fifty percent in less developed countries; world population was falling; the crude birthrate in much of Africa and South America had dropped to less than one percent, and the same thing was true in impoverished areas of Europe and North America, including the urban slums. In some places the female-male ratio of live births had dropped significantly. Demographics were changing; the population pyramid was moving toward a spindle shape. There were indications, tentative as yet, of a decline in the crude birthrate even among middle-class Americans and Europeans. How much of this could be attributed to new birth-control methods was impossible to say, but Owen had data showing an increase in referrals to fertility clinics.

Symbiont detect-and-destroy devices had succeeded in cleaning out certain areas and keeping them that way—sensitive government offices, for instance, including the White House. The use of d&d devices had certainly reduced the symbionts’ mobility, but did it really matter? They were so widespread now that they didn’t have to travel.

In any event, her side had won some battles but it was clear that the war was lost. Washington did not accept that yet, but it was true. The symbionts had effectively saturated the population, and it was cold comfort that it had happened just about when her charts had predicted. Now all they could do, unless some breakthrough came along, was to study the disease and learn to live with it.

Some of the changes certainly seemed benign. No more killing, no more war; it was hard to argue with that. The symbionts wanted to make human beings happier: that was what they all said, according to Italiano. But how could anyone know if it was true, and even if it was, to what end?

She thought of Washington’s wild scheme, a year or so ago, to establish symbiont-free centers and then sterilize the rest of the world. It was a horrible idea, and it was hopelessly impractical, even for a strong central government. There was no such government anywhere in the world, with the possible exception of Singapore. Western Europe was splitting into hundreds of ethnic enclaves; secessionists had taken control in most of China and in eastern and southern parts of the RSFSR. Africa was more like a patchwork quilt than ever. In South America, Brazil had divided itself into three nations and Argentina into two. In the North, Quebec, Puerto Rico and Hawaii had declared their independence. Even in the contiguous states, Texas and Louisiana had seceded and formed what they called the Grand Confederacy, and there had been that silly business with the Upper Peninsula of Michigan last summer. The whole world was undergoing a political convulsion, like the one that had reshaped all the maps in the sixteenth century.

Despite President Draffy’s immense popularity, his attempted repeal of the Twenty-second Amendment had failed and he would have to step down next year, taking with him Owen’s chief source of support. The new Populist Party, although not strong enough to be a real threat, would certainly split the vote among both Democrats and Republicans, and the outcome of the 2008 elections was anybody’s guess.

Now the pink dots of children flowed into classrooms; three red subjects were crawling forward, accompanied by purple dots of security, the day was about to begin.

The computer said, “A scramble call from Henry Harmon.”

“Put him on, Mitzi.”

Harmon’s head appeared in the tube, together with a red bubble in the top left quadrant that displayed the words:

SCRAMBLE SECURE

“Hank, how are you? Is anything up?”

“Yes, I wanted to talk to you about your latest series of reports. I gather you’re seeing some evidence that the changes in the children, the ones that were conceived when the mother was infected with McNulty’s—”

“Primary hosts, we call them.”

“Right, primary hosts. Well, that you’re seeing a possibility they’re even more radically changed, personalitywise, than the other ones. Is that right?”

“Yes. Indications, not proof.”

“Okay, now here’s the situation. I’ve been talking to the Secretary about this, and he’s had some consultations with his staff and talked to the President a couple of times, and the thinking now is that somewhere down the line we might have to take, um, extreme measures. Now I gather you’re trying to identify these children by their brain-waves?”

“Yes.”

“How are you coming on that?”

“We’re making some progress.”

“All right, keep us posted. How’s the weather?”

“The weather is fine. Hank, what do you mean by ‘extreme measures’?”

“Well, it’s just a thought now, we may never do it. But if push comes to shove, we’re thinking we might have to test all the newborns in the country, and if they’re positive, put them away painlessly.”

“Hank, you can’t do that.”

“Well, we hope we won’t have to, of course.”

“I mean, politically you can’t do it.”

“Oh, well, don’t worry, the President will work that out.”

“It’s an abhorrent thought.”

“I know that,” Harmon said sympathetically. “It is abhorrent, Harriet, and let’s hope it never happens, but we have to be prepared. Keep in touch about the brain-waves, will you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s all then, Harriet. Good to talk to you.”

Owen sat brooding at her desk for a long time. Finally she roused herself and said, “Mitzi, Eliza mode.”

“Yes, Harriet?” The Eliza voice was warmer than Mitzi’s; it sounded like that of a woman in her vigorous middle years. “What seems to be troubling you?”

She hesitated. “I suppose I’m feeling a conflict between my scientific training and my moral scruples.”

“Can you put that in simpler terms?”

“Don’t you understand it?”

“The question is whether you understand it.”

Touche. “Well, all right. My duty as a scientist is to investigate problems and propose solutions, and that’s all. To introduce moral considerations into that process would be bad science. But as a human being I have to think sometimes about the effect of what I do.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Yes, I can. One of the things I’m trying to find out is whether the primary hosts of McNulty’s show irreversible personality changes more severe than those of secondary hosts, and if so whether those changes imply a threat to society. If I conclude that there is such a possibility, the political effect may be a decision to sacrifice those children. If I’m wrong, I may be doing good science, but I’m committing a crime against humanity.”

“Which is more important, doing good science or not committing a crime against humanity?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you think of any circumstances in which you would decide one way or the other?”

“Well, if I knew absolutely that the primary hosts would cause the breakdown of civilization, then I wouldn’t have any difficulty, but there’s no way I can know that for certain. But I can’t avoid the necessity of coming to some conclusion. If I ignore the problem or refuse to deal with it on moral grounds, that in itself is a decision that could be morally criminal.”

“So your problem is that you have to act on inadequate knowledge?”

“Yes.”

“And that either way you decide, you may be wrong?”

“Yes.”

“In general, what is the solution to such problems?”

“To gain enough knowledge to make firm predictions.”

“Is that part of doing science?”

“Yes. I see.” After a moment she said, “Thank you, Eliza.”

Afterward she sat back and thought about it. She knew perfectly well that the Eliza program was only a series of Rogerian strategies designed to draw the patient out and elicit better statements of the problem in which the solution might be implicit; and yet it seemed almost uncanny to her how quickly it had gone to the heart of the matter.

It was true that these decisions could not be made without moral agony until there was a real science of human behavior. Every good experiment and every bit of firm data was an advance toward that goal. That was the answer; it had to be.

She felt better, but she still didn’t feel good. In science, where it was a point of pride to use precise terminology, why did they have to say “sacrifice,” of all things, when they meant “kill”?