A Reasonable World

1

Stanley Bliss, Ex-Chief of Operations of the ocean habitat Sea Venture, had been for some years living the life of a semi-retired hotelier at his inn on the Costa del Sol near Malaga. Royalties from his book about CV, not to mention the holo rights and consulting fees and so on, had made him financially independent even of the inn, which was very profitable and had been for years. Local government, on the whole, was unobtrusive; the separatist problems in the north were agreeably remote.

Decent food and few worries had combined to increase Bliss’s contentment as well as his girth, and so had the permanent absence of his wife, whom he had divorced in 2000, and his ne’er-do-well son, who had finally gotten some sort of job in The Gambia in 2001 and not been heard of since.

Into this little paradise a serpent came in the spring of 2005, in the form of a letter handed to him by Senorita Cortazar with his morning tea. It was from somebody named Roland Casewit III, Undersecretary of Peace in the U.S. government; it began with some complimentary phrases, then went on: “The Government of the United States would greatly value your cooperation in establishing an Expert System aboard Sea Venture in order to give the present staff the benefit of your knowledge and expertise. If it is convenient to you, we would like you to visit Sea Venture for this purpose, as the guest of the United States Government, during the last two weeks of June. Please signify your acceptance to this office as soon as possible.”

“Oh, damn,” said Bliss.

He couldn’t turn them down, and it wouldn’t be any good putting them off. “Actually, you’d like to see the old girl again, wouldn’t you?” asked his friend Captain Hartman, when Bliss rang him up to complain.

“Out of curiosity, perhaps. I understand they’ve turned CV into a sort of prison hulk. I’d just as soon not see that, but I can’t get out of it. What are you doing in June?”

“Nothing in particular. Why, would you like me to come along?”

Bliss and Hartman arrived blear-eyed in Seattle on June 15; it was eight o’clock in the evening when it ought to have been four in the morning. They were met by a cheerful young man named Corcoran, Dr. Owen’s assistant, who took them in a chauffeured limousine to their hotel and showed them a few of the sights along the way. Hartman had been rather hoping to see the view from the Space Needle, but Corcoran informed him that it had been heavily damaged in a terrorist attack two years ago and had not yet been rebuilt. Feeling disoriented, the two visitors had a drink in the bar and went to bed.

In the morning after breakfast they were picked up again by Corcoran for the drive out to Sea Venture. CV, large and white as ever but looking a bit the worse for wear, was moored at the U.S. Coast Guard base in Salmon Bay. Some refitting was being done, Corcoran told them, and there were also a few bureaucratic hurdles to be dealt with before CV would cruise again.

“Is it true that you’ve got a prison population here?” Hartman asked.

“Oh, I wouldn’t put it that way, sir. CV is a research installation now. There is a resident population of compulsory volunteers—we’re studying them for the effects of McNulty’s Disease.”

They showed their boarding passes and rode up to the forward lobby, where they received temporary ID cards to be pinned on the left lapel. Then they took the elevator up to the Signal Deck, where Dr. Harriet Owen was waiting for them. She was a bit grayer than Bliss remembered her, but also more confident somehow, more in command.

“Chief Bliss and Captain Hartman, welcome,” she said. “Did you have a good trip?”

“Very nice,” said Bliss politely, and Hartman nodded. In fact, they were both suffering from jet lag, or jet advance you might call it, and Hartman had been barely civil at breakfast.

Owen said, “As you know, we wanted you to come here to explore the idea of putting your knowledge and experience into what the computer people call an expert system, so that in effect the computer can do just what you would have done in any foreseeable situation.”

“What if the situation isn’t foreseeable?” Bliss wanted to know.

“Well, that’s the problem, of course, but Mr. Ewald is hoping that between you you can think of just about everything that could conceivably happen. Anyhow, it’s quite an exciting idea, and I hope you’ll enjoy the experience.”

“Yes. By the way, I mentioned to Mr. Corcoran that I’d like to have the chance to talk to Randall Geller and Yvonne Barlow whilst I’m here.”

“I know you did, and that interview will be set up for you after the session this morning.”

“They’re all right, I hope?”

“Oh, yes, they’re fine. They send their regards.”

Ewald was waiting for them in the Control Center, a chubby bald young man with an unsuccessful mustache. He had rigged up a simulator in the form of a black box with cables snaking all over: he explained that by giving simple instructions to the simulator he could display canned views on the TV screens and even, to all appearance, in the quartz deadlights, and could make any desired readings appear on the instruments. Bliss then had to look at the instruments and say what orders he would give: then Ewald would ask him why he gave them, or why he hadn’t given other ones. After the first five minutes Hartman excused himself and wandered out into the Boat Deck corridors. An alert security officer said, “Excuse me, sir, are you supposed to be here?”

“I’m a visitor,” Hartman said, showing his badge. “I thought I might just look round a bit.”

The guard ran his minicom over the badge, looked at the readout. “This says you’re supposed to be in the Control Center.”

“Quite right, but it’s very boring there.”.

The officer spoke into his phone. After a moment he got a reply, and said, “You can walk around the unrestricted areas, sir, until Mr. Bliss is ready to leave. I’m getting a security person to guide you.”

“That’s not necessary,” Hartman said; but they waited until another guard came up, a young woman who introduced herself as Miss McMasters.

“Which are the unrestricted areas, then?” Hartman asked as they set off down the corridor. There was something institutional about the place now; the walls, which had been papered before, were now painted in blue and cream. Odd how depressing those two colors could be.

“All the public areas on the Boat Deck and Promenade Deck are unrestricted,” said Miss McMasters with a cheerful smile. “Will that do?”

“Oh, certainly. Perhaps I should have asked, which areas are restricted?”

“I’m sorry, that’s restricted information.”

Practically no one was in the forward Boat Deck lobby except maintenance people in blue coveralls. The scientists, Hartman presumed, were in their laboratories and the prisoners in their cells. After a few more attempts to draw Miss McMasters out, Hartman gave it up and announced that he would like to leave. Miss McMasters escorted him to the exit, where his badge was taken away. Outside the checkpoint he hailed an amphicab, and spent the rest of the morning in the Olde Curiosity Shop, the Aquarium, and the charming half-timbered shops of the Olde Fishinge Village overlooking the new dike or levee or whatever they called it. A pleasing camouflage of sea air drifted from atomizers at every comer, and the smell of dead fish was hardly noticeable.

Bliss found Geller and Barlow in a small conference room near Owen’s office on the Signal Deck; they looked a little thinner than he remembered them, not quite so much the carefree youth.

“Randall and Yvonne, it’s good to see you,” he said. They shook hands and sat down. “Is it all right to talk here?”

“You mean is it bugged?” Geller said. “I don’t know. I don’t care if it is or not.”

“Well, are they treating you all right? Is there anything I can do?”

“They’re treating us okay. Some of the others, not so good. They’re breeding them like lab animals, did you know that? Trying to produce a new stock of children infected at birth.”

“Surely they can’t do that.”

“Oh, yes, they can. We blew the whistle on them, but all that did was make them come out in the open with it. People who volunteer for the program get privileges, and people who refuse have a hard time, so they get the volunteers. But they’re easy on us, for some reason. They’re going to give us our old jobs in the marine lab, if we want them. Or we can just lay back and be passengers.”

“They offered to let one of us go,” Yvonne said.

“Namely me, because our kid drives me crazier than Yvonne. But we’re selling the place in Michigan anyway, and there wouldn’t be any point to it. There’s a chance we can talk Owen into letting us do some of our own research. Things could be worse. What are you doing here?”

Bliss explained about the expert system. “Frankly, I wouldn’t care to trust myself to it. How long do you think they’ll keep you here?”

They both looked grim. “Till Geoffrey is in college, probably,” said Yvonne.

“But that’s monstrous! Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“We have a lawyer, and he’s petitioning for habeas corpus, but he says we shouldn’t hold our breath.”

“Well, let’s look on the bright side,” said Geller. “Twenty years from now, we can collaborate on a book called Captives on CV. ”

“Not very snappy. How about Love Slaves Afloat?"

They smiled at each other. And, all things considered, Bliss realized, they really were all right.

A young woman came up to him at the bus stop. “Chief Bliss, I’m Ann Bonano of the Toronto Star. Welcome to Seattle.”

“Thank you. How did you know I was here?”

“Oh, we have our methods. Staying long?”

“Just a week or so.”

“And the purpose of your visit?”

Bliss explained again about the expert system. Bonano took a few notes. “That’s interesting. Did you know that all the airlines are using expert systems in place of pilots now—and air controllers too?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” said Bliss with a shudder.

“Then is it true that you’re not going to sign on again as CV’s Chief of Operations?”

“Heavens, no. I’m quite content to be retired, thank you. CV was a silly thing to begin with.”

“How do you mean, silly?”

“Well, you know, a prototype open sea habitat was what they called it, but it wasn’t the prototype of anything. We don’t need to build floating cities, the ones on land are much cheaper and more useful. The only thing sillier is L-Five, and I suppose that’s why it’s going forward.”

Bonano thought a moment. “Do you think the pyramids were silly?”

“Yes, absolutely. Magnificently silly. You know, we seem to have this incredible urge to build large useless things. The larger the better, of course, but it really helps to put the project over if they’re useless as well. I don’t know why that is, do you?”

“No, I don’t. Well, thank you, Mr. Bliss.”

That evening he and Hartman turned on the holo and found themselves watching the Senate hearings on allegations of cruelty to CV detainees. A pale, dark-haired young man was at the witness table.

“... have that apparatus here, and I’d like you to watch, if you would, while I demonstrate it on myself.”

“We will take that under advisement,” said Senator Gottlieb, a courtly white-haired man. “Now, Mr. Plotkin, you don’t deny, as I understand it, that this procedure was intended to inflict intolerable pain on the subject? In order to cause the parasite to leave his body?”

“Senator, that’s correct, but as you know, intolerable is a word that means different things to different people. The pain caused by this apparatus is moderate, I would say, but it’s unpleasant. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a bad toothache, Senator, or if anybody on the panel has? Well, that pain I would say is about twice the highest point reached on the Wolff-Wolf apparatus, and yet people endure it; I have myself. And then there’s childbirth, which I haven’t experienced.” Plotkin smirked.

“The question is whether people can tolerate a pain that is natural in origin,” said Senator Gottlieb, “or whether they ought to be made to tolerate a pain inflicted by somebody else. We call that torture, as you know, Mr. Plotkin.”

“Except when it’s done in the course of scientific research,” Plotkin said.

“Then you don’t call it torture?”

“No.”

“Bloody barbarian,” Bliss said, “they ought to shoot him.”

“But surely this isn’t still going on?”

“If I thought so, I wouldn’t be here.”

“It’s a prison ship, though.”

Bliss squirmed in his chair. “I know it is. I ask myself, if I refused to cooperate, what would the result be? Would they stick to this insane scheme of teaching a computer to run CV, or would they hire somebody competent?”

“There isn’t anybody as competent as you.”

“That’s as may be. At least, if I do my job and the computer does what they say it can, it’s possible that Sea Venture won’t sink, prisoners and all.”

Later the subcommittee allowed Plotkin to demonstrate the Wolff-Wolf machine. He put his bare arm under the lens and turned up the rheostat. “This is one dol,” he said. “Just a faint prickling warmth. “This is three—this is five—seven—” The skin of his pale arm was turning pink. “This is eight.” He turned the machine off:

“And is eight dols as high as you went, with the patient?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Plotkin, in preparing for this demonstration, did you use any pain-killer of any kind?”

“No, sir. I did not. Anything of that kind would have been falsifying the demonstration. As a scientist, I would never do that, Senator. That would be unprincipled behavior.”

Harriet Owen got up at six the next morning, an hour before her usual time, and ate her breakfast while she watched the Senate hearings in Washington. Plotkin’s performance the day before had been distasteful but adequate, and he had been excused. Now, apparently, the subcommittee was considering the whole question of parasite containment. A familiar face caught her eye. “Senator,” Dr. Wallace McNulty was saying, “I’d like to comment on some testimony you heard before from Mr. Peebles at NIH. If I understand what they’re saying, they believe the only way to get rid of this thing is to isolate breeding populations of human beings, make sure they’re free of symbionts, and forbid other people to reproduce, period. And then what?”

“As I understand Mr. Peebles’ testimony,” said the Chairman, “then we would expand slowly out of the quarantined areas into areas of depopulation.”

“What about livestock?” McNulty asked. “Do you know the thing can go into a goat, or a fish?”

“I understand that’s your belief, Doctor. If that’s true, then I suppose it would be necessary to sterilize the infected areas, one at a time, before we expand into them again. I want to say that of course we all hope such extreme measures will not be needed.”

“You know, this is loony,” McNulty said. “You’re talking about human beings as if they were laboratory animals.”

The chairman was rapping his gavel. “You are out of order, Dr. McNulty.”

McNulty raised his voice. “You can’t get away with that, and if you could, what for?”

The chairman said, “Dr. McNulty, your remarks are out of order, and no more such outbursts will be permitted. Nevertheless, before we excuse you, I believe Senator Jergen would like to respond.”

Jergen said stiffly, “What’s your alternative, Doctor, just to give up and live with this parasite forever? Remember that we don’t know what the long-term effects may be. There is evidence that the parasites are actually killing people in high office already. We don’t know what else they are capable of. A hundred years from now we may be watching the human race go right down the slide.”

McNulty said, “Senator, I take it you haven’t had the disease yourself?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“I thought not.”

“How did we ever come to this?” said Bliss. “It’s fascism all over again.” They were walking down the street, looking for a Greek restaurant Hartman thought he remembered seeing. Outside the carefully preserved tourist areas, the city had altered dismally since the last time Bliss had been here: plastic panels warping off the sides of buildings, some of them replaced by decaying sheets of particleboard; scabby fluepipes, scumbled blue and red, hanging all anyhow from building faces; filth, grime, rubbish heaped in comers.

"Plus ca change, the more it’s the same old mess,” Hartman said. “If you look back far enough, what we now call national governments all began as protection rackets, pure and simple.”

A ragged man lurched toward them out of a doorway. “Spare a fiver, boss? I haven’t ate since yesterday.” Hartman fumbled out a plastic coin and gave it to him.

“Thanks, boss,” said the man. There was something wrong with his face; it was grey and sweaty. He went away with a stumbling gait.

“Probably spend it on drugs,” Bliss said.,

“No doubt. Well, as I was saying, you’ve heard about protection? A gangster stops by and tells you that for five hundred dollars a month he’ll protect you against vandalism. If you turn him down, you know somebody will break your windows. So you pay. The same thing happened thousands of years ago, when people stopped hunting and gathering and took up agriculture. As soon as there were large fixed populations of farmers, they became a profit source for bandits. The bandits farmed the farmers. They said, turn over a share of what you produce, and we’ll protect you against other bandits. And they did, you know, but if they hadn’t, the next lot would have been no worse. Then the bandits fought each other for territory, and presently there were warlords and dukes and so on. The imperial palaces in China were built on the rice extorted from peasants. So the peasants, who had had plenty for themselves, were reduced to poverty, and the imperial court got rich. When England and France went to war in the fourteenth century, they were disputing the right to farm the French peasants. We’ve always had the two classes, the one that produces and the one that takes.”

“Aren’t you a member of the class that takes?”

“I am not, I’m a working man like yourself. Now mind you, the system produced some marvelous things. The glory that was Greece and so on. But it certainly has altered our moral perceptions. I remember when the controversy over the Aswan Dam was going on, somebody said that the irrigation projects were good on balance because they produced more food. And somebody else replied that it was the people in the cities who got the food, and the peasants who got bilharziasis.”

“But don’t you think it’s better for some people to be rich, or at least comfortably off^-, than for everybody to be poor?”

“That’s my point, the peasants weren’t poor until the gangsters took them over. Nowadays there are no more peasants in this part of the world, and nobody asked for their opinion anyhow, but how many would have agreed to that proposition, do you suppose?”

“I take your point, but that’s all water under the bridge.”

“Ah, but it isn’t. The question is being reopened, you see, because the parasites are beginning to kill people who kill other people. Presently the gangsters won’t be able to use force any longer. If everybody agrees that it’s better for some to be rich and the rest to be poor, then nothing will change. But I don’t think so, do you?”

After a week and a half Bliss and Hartman got on a plane and went home, Bliss to Spain and Hartman to England.

Later that year the Senate subcommittee returned a report declaring that the detention of McNulty’s victims, and the pain experiments thereon, were justified under the powers of the Emergency Civil Control Authority, but requesting the President to instruct the experimenters to use more humane methods in future, whenever possible. Sea Venture, with its complement of scientists, security people and detainees, went to sea in November.