The Quiet Pools

CHAPTER 8 —GGG— “We have not forgotten.”

If it seemed odd sometimes to outsiders that the director of the Diaspora hyperlibrary project was not a librarian but a historian, it usually seemed less so when they found out who the historian was.

Thomas Tidwell was that oddity which seemed to come along once in a generation—a popular writer-director who also had the respect of his more reserved peers. The British-born, Oxford-trained Tidwell had earned respect through more than thirty years of work on Millennial culture, including two standard reference works, Global Technocracy and Faith and Fear. But he gained notoriety with a single work, a series of nine videssays on the sexual mores of the last pre-AIDS generation.

Curiously, A Summer in Eden was seen as validation by both the most conservative and the most experimental elements of society. For the former, it was a cautionary parable, a warning of dire consequences if the rigid mores of the AIDS era were recklessly abandoned. For the latter, it was an exhilarating manifesto, an invitation to abandon now-irrelevant conventions and re-create a lost age of sexual freedom. The two poles had been fighting a war of opinion ever since—more than twenty-two years.

One voice that did not join the debate on either side was that of Thomas Tidwell. In an early interview, he said simply, “Eden is no more important than any other of my works, and everything I have to say on the subject is contained within its nine segments. That was, after all, the point of making it.”

But that did not end the questions, nor restore to Tidwell even the tenth part of the blissful invisibility which he considered one of his two most important working tools. His next work, a serious study of the 2042 Amerussian “Peace Police” treaty, was mispromoted by a syndicator eager for another licensing bonanza and misreviewed by nearly everyone. Popular media condemned it for dullness; dull journals condemned him for his popularity.

Tidwell had no more to say about the reception of The Guardians than he had that of A Summer in Eden. And if the ego-crushing reception given the former was as painful for Tidwell as it would have been for any normal man, not even his friends were allowed to know it. A few, including his wife Marion, even suspected that he had deliberately and calculatedly set out to puncture the balloon of his own fame.

But for what happened next, they might have continued to suspect that.

In the preceding months, Tidwell had rejected two offers from Allied Transcon to become official historian of the Diaspora Project. But he had continued to listen with interest. The opportunity to write the definitive account of what would either be humanity’s greatest leap or its greatest stumble, to create what amounted to the cultural memory of an entire new community, was tempting. Almost tempting enough to coax Tidwell to surrender his other precious tool—his autonomy.

Almost, but not quite.

Then came The Guardians, and on its heels a new offer from Allied which contained new guarantees of access and independence. This time Tidwell signed, insisting, perhaps even believing, that it was the latter that swung the balance.

“I intend to take a thousand-year view of the Diaspora—five hundred years into the past and five hundred years into the future,” he had said at the press conference announcing his appointment. “I will be loyal to the truth and no one else. Allied understands this. I will have the full cooperation of the principals and the freedom to write what my conscience and professional judgment dictate.”

But guarantees were paper things, easily crushed by bureaucracies, frayed by time. It was periodically necessary to breathe life into the cold, precise legalisms. That was the task which faced Tidwell now, which had drawn him from his comfortable manor house near Halfwhistle, within sight of Hadrian’s Wall, to the executive suites of the Selection Section in Prainha.

Waiting for Karin Oker, Tidwell stood at the window and looked out at the spaceport. The contrast between the place Tidwell had left and the place he had come to could hardly have been sharper. The North Country was all rounded edges, a much-tramped land littered with history. Prainha was all hard edges, carved in relatively youthful memory from the Amazon forest.

The fairy-castle mountain of the Kare-Kantrowitz launch tower was a garish superposition on the denuded forest, the spacecraft which screamed away from its four-kilometer summit harsh substitutes for the parrots and macaws they had displaced. The blanketing rectenna, which sprawled across more than sixty square kilometers, was a metallic parody of the former jungle canopy. Spreading its “leaves” wide, it captured precious energy from space; in its shadow, a bustling ecology of technology thrived.

Tidwell wondered if they saw what they had done here, if they recognized the truth in Jeremiah’s charges. Someday I will have to ask Sasaki—

The inner door of the suite opened, and an olive-skinned man emerged, followed closely by a pale, willowy blond-haired woman. “Thank you, Raja,” she said. “We’ll take it up at the weeklies.” Then she looked past her companion to Tidwell. “Professor Tidwell?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Karin Oker. Welcome to Prainha, Professor.” She nodded toward the window. “Quite a sight, isn’t it?”

Both the honorary title she used and the assumption that this was his first visit to Brazil were in error. He noted the lapses, but did not trouble himself to correct them. It was enough to learn from them that she was ignorant of who he was and that she viewed meeting with him as a necessary annoyance.

“I was just contemplating that fact,” he said, settling in a chair facing away from the window. “Will we have privacy here?”

“If we ask for it,” she said, selecting her own chair. “Privacy Level Two, please.”

The offcom acknowledged with a musical note.

“There,” she said. “We won’t be interrupted except by the Director or a base emergency.”

“Thank you,” he said with a polite smile. “I appreciate it the more for knowing that I, too, am an interruption. I very much regret finding it necessary to come here. But this seemed the most direct way of ending the running battle between your people and mine.”

“Battle?”

“My staff’s struggle to collect the information I require, and your staff’s struggle to keep it from us. It’s a sorry business when one branch of Allied has more difficulty getting cooperation from another branch than it does dealing with outsiders who have no reason to help us.”

“I wasn’t aware that you were having such problems,” Oker said. “If there have been, I’m sure that they’re based on misunderstandings. What have you been denied?”

“I’m less concerned about what we’ve been denied than with the fact that the working relationship between us has turned for the worse. We were partners with you. Now we are treated as supplicants, and reasonable, routine requests are met with excuses, delays, denials, and half-answers.”

Oker was unhappy and unpracticed at hiding it. “Professor Tidwell, surely you understand that Selection’s work is the most sensitive area of the Project. Much of the data, even the procedures we use, is personal or proprietary. Obviously, any release—even to the Historian’s Office—needs to be screened and reviewed. And just as obviously, some requests might need to be denied.”

Drawing himself up in his chair, Tidwell said in measured tones, “I am responsible for creating the definitive history of the expedition. That includes the personal histories of every pioneer. Remember, please, that this history is not only for us but for them. I have to anticipate questions which may not be asked for fifty years.”

“I have to ask again—what have you been denied?”

“Personal histories include genetic histories. But we have been told we may not have access to your genetic library,” Tidwell said. “And when we request a briefing on the final selection criteria, I expect more than a copy of the application file you made available to prospective pioneers.”

Oker was shaking her head. “Hordes of lawyers are poised waiting to file suit on behalf of unsuccessful candidates. Every lawsuit has the potential for disrupting the prep schedule, or worse, taking the selection decision out of our hands.”

“We are neither lawyers nor litigants. What has that to do with us?”

“There are thousands of Allied employees holding options,” Oker said stubbornly. “Letting detailed selection data out into the corporation is an invitation to trouble.”

“Perhaps, being comparatively new to the Project,” said Tidwell, “you don’t realize that this sort of information was made available to us for the Ur library.”

“Times are different now,” Oker said.

“Not in any meaningful way. Surely, the first thing that any competent lawyer would do is subpoena our records.”

“And he would fight any order to release them. We would destroy them rather than release them.”

“Interesting,” Tidwell said. “Are the selections that subjective? Are we afraid to defend our selection practices in public?”

“No,” Oker said. “They’re as objective as possible. They’re blind selections, made by AI engines at the proc centers.”

“According to what criteria?”

“By the criteria spelled out in the application file—skill training, psych screenings, genetic screenings, intelligence and adaptability—”

“Weighted.”

“Of course.”

“What are the weightings?”

“The weightings are necessarily subjective,” Oker admitted. “But that doesn’t mean they were set casually. And I’m not about to let the process we went through to set them be picked apart by a know-nothing judge or a well-meaning but ignorant layman.”

“That seems arrogant, Dr. Oker.”

She bristled. “We don’t even tell the nominees why they’ve been chosen. Or the rejects why they weren’t. Why should we tell you?”

Tidwell studied her. “Are you afraid of the genetic discrimination issue?”

The question seemed to surprise her. “Of course,” she said, recovering. “Almost half of our options are held in countries with antidiscrimination or bodily privacy laws. The American law is particularly troublesome.”

“And yet it’s well known that you’ve expanded your genetic screening since Ur.”

“Is it?”

“Your staff chart shows the section has sixty-five more geneticists than it did six years ago, when you arrived. The obvious conclusion is that the genetic factor has become more important.”

“We were understaffed when I arrived. And we are more thorough now with the genetics. We do full genotypes for every candidate, for example.”

“I know,” said Tidwell. “But why you do them, and what you look for? These questions you have not answered, except in generalities. ‘For screening.’ ‘To create a healthy gene pool.’ I must have better answers.”

She shook her head. “I can’t release that data. You’ll have to do what you can to work around it.”

“It’s not your decision to make,” Tidwell said. “The decision was made by Director Sasaki fifteen years ago. My right of access is unrestricted.”

“Times are different now,” Oker repeated. “We’re prepared to upload standard adoption biographies for each of the donor packages, sometime before departure. The living passengers can obtain private testing and see to their own genealogies, if they think it important.”

“I see,” Tidwell said, sitting back. “Apparently, there was no misunderstanding, after all.”

“You don’t understand what you’re asking for, Professor.”

“For the record, it’s Doctor Tidwell, twice over, in history and sociology,” Tidwell said, crossing his right leg over his left. “You see, we are educable, Dr. Oker—not a one of my staff is dead yet.”

Oker flushed, the first sign of an emotion other than anger. “This isn’t personal, Doctor,” she said. “We have a monopoly on the kind of expertise needed to interpret the raw data. I know, because if we could have found more experts, we’d have put them on staff, too.”

“Then you should be prepared to make one of your experts available to us along with the data,” Tidwell said, rising.

“If the Director requires me to.”

“She will,” Tidwell said. “Aren’t you aware that the Director intends to sell the genetic library to at least three governments as a research base?”

Oker went white. “That hasn’t been announced,” she said stiffly.

“But it’s so, all the same,” Tidwell said.

He saw in her eyes that she knew she had underestimated him; she saw in his that he would not gloat in victory. “The raw data is almost unimaginably voluminous,” she said slowly. “A single genotype is hundreds of thousands of genes, millions of codons—”

“I would imagine we can make do with something less than the full library,” Tidwell said. “Perhaps the selection algorithm and the scoring of the successful candidates will prove sufficient. And you might wish to designate a contact person with authority to answer inquiries, not evade them.”

Reluctantly, she said, “I think that could be arranged.”

He nodded. “Then I’ve taken enough of your time. The details can be worked out by staff. Thank you, Dr. Oker.” He bowed slightly and withdrew toward the door.

He had taken just five steps when she called after him. “Dr. Tidwell—”

“Yes?”

She was standing, and her eyes were clouded by an emotion Tidwell could not quite define. “You wouldn’t do anything to harm us, would you?”

“Pardon me?”

“The Project. You wouldn’t endanger Memphis.”

Puzzlement wrinkled his brow. “What could endanger it?”

“The truth,” she said. “Sometimes the truth can be a very dangerous thing.”

Tidwell retraced his steps. “What will I find if you open your files?”

She looked down at her hands, out the window at the spaceport, everywhere but at him.

“Privacy Level One,” she said at last, lifting her head and gazing levelly into his eyes. The offcom chimed. “Sit down, Dr. Tidwell. I’m going to rewrite your history for you.”

Tidwell listened for nearly an hour, growing paler and smaller with each passing minute. He did not interrupt or quibble, protest or resist. Nor did he make any sign of acknowledgment. He listened so passively that presently Oker interrupted herself to ask if he was all right.

“You’ve asked me to declare my life’s work irrelevant,” he said with a sad smile. “If what you’ve said is true, I’ve been a charlatan. I’ve built a career describing the symptoms of history while the cause went undiagnosed.”

“You’re hardly alone in that,” Oker said. “Less than a hundred people know.”

“Sasaki.”

“Of course,” Oker said. “She was the one who told me, six years ago.”

Tidwell shook his head. “I thought I understood the impulse. That part was written years ago. The unsuccessful search for extraterrestrial life. The sense of cultural mortality created by AIDS. The rechanneling of a post-Cold War economy.”

“All true. Just not the whole story. Another layer, lying underneath.”

“Yes—the curiosity! The unflagging, insatiable curiosity. The challenge to the spirit. From Lucretius to da Vinci to Tsiolkovsky to von Braun to Armstrong to Morgan. The dream they shared.”

“No,” Oker corrected. “The genes they shared.”

“I thought I was tracing the history of an idea. Now you claim that all I’ve done is track an infection.”

“Too harsh a word,” Oker said. “We are what we are.”

“Biology is destiny.” It was said with a cynical scorn.

“Hardly. We might have failed. Might still fail. Others did.”

“Others?”

“We’re not the first species to carry the Chi Sequence. Only the latest.”

“How far back?”

“To the beginning, perhaps. Life is a chemical reaction with audacity. And the meaning of life is to make new life. Nothing more. We just never understood the scale on which the drama was being played.”

“It isn’t our story. It never was,” Tidwell said hoarsely.

“It is now.”

Tidwell retreated, regrouped. “There is no proof.”

“No. Not for the past. But enough for the present.”

“Enough to make machines of us? Enough to make a joke of the will?”

“No. Do you know how hard it is to link complex behaviors and simple genes, even now? The Chi Sequence is a challenge, a call—you used the word impulse. We answered because we could.”

“Not because we chose to. You make my point.”

“No,” Oker said forcefully. “A marriage of choice and destiny. Dr. Tidwell, I didn’t accept this easily or happily. I did not want to be convinced. I was a Catholic. This has cost me my God.” She showed a faint frown. “You don’t have to believe, Dr. Tidwell. But the world is as it is. It doesn’t much care what we believe.”

“This is guiding policy?”

“Yes.”

Tidwell paused. “I want to talk to Sasaki.”

Oker nodded. “I’ll call her.”

The closest thing to an expression on Hiroko Sasaki’s face was a slight knitting of her thin black eyebrows.

“You lied to me,” Tidwell said plaintively.

“I did not.”

“She said you knew about the Chi Sequence,” he insisted, gesturing at Karin Oker, who was orbiting about him in Sasaki’s huge office at a psychologically safe distance.

“Yes.”

“How long have you known?”

There was no hesitation. “Nearly ten years.”

“Since before you recruited me.”

“Yes.”

“Then you lied to me.”

Sasaki looked across the room and pinned Oker with her eyes. “Doctor, what instructions did you have concerning Dr. Tidwell and the Chi Sequence?”

“To tell him what I knew—no, I think you phrased it ‘what I believed’—if ever he should ask.” She looked at Tidwell. “I thought that was a mistake.”

“To keep it from me?”

“To tell you. Even now that it’s done, I’m not sure that it wasn’t a mistake. It’s nothing personal, Doctor. But if this gets out, everything we have planned is in danger.”

“Why is that?”

“You have the degree in sociology, Doctor,” Oker said. “Is it that hard to see? To brand ourselves the elect—”

“Yes,” Tidwell said, recalling the promise she had tried to extract from him. You wouldn’t hurt us, would you? “Yes, of course.”

Sasaki rose from her cushion. “Thank you, Dr. Oker. Would you leave us now?”

Nodding, Oker moved toward the door. “I’m sorry, Dr. Tidwell,” she said, pausing. “I really am. I didn’t enjoy waking you.”

“I know,” he said.

She left, and Sasaki turned to Tidwell. “Thomas, will you sit with me?”

They sank to the cushions together. “I hope that you can understand,” she said. “Karin must believe. I must question. I need to know if I am making decisions for one generation or for all generations.”

“Does it matter?” asked Tidwell. “Can you do anything different for knowing?”

“Yes. I already have,” she said. “Thomas, I know that your pride has been hurt by what you view as deception—”

“Why should she know?” he burst out. “You tell her—you tell a hundred—and keep it from me. I considered you a friend, Hiroko.”

She reached for his hand, covered it with her own cool skin. “Karin is a talent, a gift, in her field. Her work for the Project required that she know. Yours required that you not know. I could not tell you, not if you were to do what I needed you to— what I still need you to do.”

“You presume too much.”

“That is pique speaking,” she said. “Thomas, I asked you to write our history because I knew that if this thread was there, you would find it on your own. That if the history you wrote and the history Karin has built coincided, that I would have my proof.”

“So what do you want?”

“Read your own writing. Ask yourself if reason and hubris and lebensraum and frontier fever are enough to explain it, to carry us from Olduvai Gorge to here. Or whether those are all synonyms for some other cause. Whether what we have done makes more sense or less for what you’ve heard today.”

“You think you know the answer.”

She bobbed her head in disagreement. “You misread me, Thomas. I hope that Karin is wrong.”

“Why?”

A faint smile. “Because I do not know that I am equal to a billion-year burden.”

“One starship has already sailed.”

“One is not enough,” she said. “One is a frail reed. You must help me, Thomas. Reflect. And then come and tell me what you see, so that I will better know what it is that I must do.”

He sighed, covered her hand with his. “You ask a great deal.”

“From you, as from myself.”

Tidwell squeezed her hand and then freed it. “A question?”

“Of course.”

“Do I carry the Chi Sequence?”

Sasaki answered without hesitation. “I do not know,” she said. “You were never tested. Do you wish to be?”

His breath caught and he looked at her wonderingly. He had expected an answer, not a choice. Tell me yes, tell me no, and then I’ll go away to worry about what it means. To look inside myself as well as my history. Then he saw with sudden insight that he had been given a gift. Yes, yes—what song does your body sing, and where did you first hear it? It was not something he should have to be told. He would find out for himself.

“I think not,” Tidwell said. “Not yet.”

He could not decide whether he was pleased or annoyed by Sasaki’s approving smile.