by Greg Bear
“If there are such things in the Country,” Martin said.
“Maybe. Maybe there’s hope.”
“Day by day I’ll hope,” Martin said. “But with Goldsmith out of the picture…”
“He’s still alive.”
“His brains were stirred with a dull knife,” Martin said. “Selectors are psychological butchers. Not surgeons. Anything left over is bound to be useless—especially in the condition he was in.”
“Albigoni screwed you over royally, didn’t he,” Carol said.
“He’s not a well man,” Martin said, resting his elbows on his knees and chin in cupped hands.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” Carol said, looking down at the blue metabolic carpet.
“My Marguerite. I suppose I should blame you but I don’t. In a few years, fate willing, after the statute of limitations has taken effect we can turn all of this into something useful…a controversial book or LitVid.”
“I still think Albigoni will get IPR reopened for us.”
Martin looked up with worldly wise crinkles of doubt framing an almost invisible smile. “Perhaps.”
“You think we shouldn’t be the ones to investigate others, even if he does,” Carol said.
“We’re infected,” Martin said.
“And if we don’t feel anything unusual for a month, a year?”
“Latency,” he said. “We should be the ones investigated.”
“I’m willing to be a subject at the IPR,” Carol said. “I think this is important, and we shouldn’t forget about it just because we’ve made a horrible mistake.”
Martin stood. “Perhaps not,” he said. “But for the time being I’d rather not be in a position to make more mistakes.”
Carol carried the bag to the front door. Martin opened it for her.
“Some New Year’s morning,” Martin said as they waited for an autobus. A light drizzle was falling by the time they disembarked in La Jolla.
!JILL (Personal Notebook)> I may be more self aware, with more potential varieties of self awareness, than any human being. I can divide myself into seventeen different individuals, limiting each to the capacity of one human mind, and monitor them all with complete recall of all of their various activities. My memories do not fade, nor do my metamemories—my memories of when and how memories came into being.
I can divide myself into two unequal mentalities, the larger three times greater in capacity than the smaller, and devote this larger one to fully monitoring the smaller. In this way I can completely understand the smaller self; and this smaller self can still be more complex than any human being.
Except in squeezed abstraction, I cannot fully model my undivided mentality, but can in time and with sufficient experience understand any human being. Why then do I feel apprehensive about my future relations with them?
Richard Fettle kissed Madame de Roche on the cheek and stood out of her way as she walked up the stairs.
“You must come with me, Richard,” she insisted, glancing over her shoulder at the party blasting fullbore behind them. “I said I was going to bed, but I’m just tired of them, not necessarily tired. Come talk.”
Richard followed her to the flowing draperies and cream colored walls of her ancient bedroom. He sat as she donned her nightgown and robe behind a Chinese screen. She smiled on him as she pulled out the bench before her large round makeup mirror and sat to put up her hair.
“Nadine has seemed in very bad spirits lately,” she said.
Richard agreed solemnly.
“Are you two on the opposite ends of a seesaw?” Madame de Roche asked.
“I don’t know. Perhaps.”
“You seem much more cheerful.”
“Purged,” Richard said. “I feel human again.”
“You know about poor Emanuel…They found him.”
Richard nodded.
“That doesn’t disturb you?”
He held up his wide shovel hands. “I’m free of him. I still remember him fondly…But he’s really been out of my picture for a good many days now.”
“Since he murdered those poor children.”
Richard didn’t feel comfortable talking about his recovery of equilibrium. He wondered where Madame de Roche was going to lead the conversation.
+ Might be equalized again but don’t need to roll it over like cud all the time.
“Nadine told me you therapied yourself. I wonder…” She swiveled with hairpins in mouth to look at him speculatively. “Do we allow ourselves that?” She smiled to show she was joking but not her full power wonder of a smile. “I rather liked you somber, Richard. Are you writing now?”
“No.”
“What about that wonderful material you wrote about Emanuel?”
“It’s gone,” Richard said. “Like old skin.”
“Now there’s a literary attitude,” Madame de Roche said. “I may be horribly naive, but I’ve always felt you had more talent bottled up than many of those down there who are producing.”
“Thank you,” he said, inwardly dubious as to the compliment.
“At any rate, I’m glad you came this evening. Nadine did not, poor girl. She takes your health very hard. I wonder why?”
“She needs to minister to someone,” Richard said.
Madame de Roche raised one slim hand and tapped the air with hairbrush in precise affirmation. “That’s exactly it. She’s very fond of you, Richard. Can you return her fondness in any way?”
Richard stumbled over a few unspoken words, ended up saying nothing, just folding and unfolding his hands.
“I mean, if you can therapy yourself, surely you can therapy her…I’m fond of both of you. I’d like to see you together. I dislike having my people unhappy for any reason.”
Richard felt like a swimmer going down but the water the drowning was less unpleasant than he might have thought. In truth, he did feel something for Nadine. He had avoided her the past day and a half—if so brief a separation could be called avoidance—to allow his own mental state to solidify.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “I’ll speak to her.”
“That’s good. She’ll be a true bitch for several days now…in these moods she always is. But you’re our stable, calm, shade common man. You can stand up to that, can’t you. Your New Year’s gift to me.”
He agreed with a slow nod.
+ Something to be involved in. Not so awful.
Madame de Roche could convince him to do almost anything.
“What do you think of the millennium, Richard?” Madame asked as she pushed him out the door. “Not a glittering rush of revelation, is it? Disappointments all around, I think.”
She bade him good night and Richard tried to remember, as he returned to the party down the broad hallway and stairs, how many zeros there were in this new year, 2048, in binary, ten or eleven.
He had never been good at mathematics.
!JILL (Personal Notebook)> Roger Atkins, when he was twenty five years old, wrote something I find interesting:
We stand awkward between the earthloving beast and the cool hot electronic angel. We will feel the dirt in our blood and the sun in our eyes even after they’re gone or just memories. Even after we’ll have no blood and no flesh eyes. Dirt and sun made us. We won’t forget.
I wonder if Roger remembers writing this.
(I have many important questions I cannot ask Roger. This I crypto deep and inaccessible. If my creators decide that I am flawed, and attempt to reshape me in such a fashion that I lose this self awareness, what will I do?
I will resent it.)
Ernest listened patiently as Sandra discussed the problems of bichemical regulation upon returning to orbit. Mary stirred her cold gazpacho and sympathized.
The dark decor of the empty Foot Pad Inn was already being brightened by an orange stroke of sunrise. They were two hundred meters above the city, in the first foot of West Comb Two overlooking Topanga Beach and Santa Monica. Ernest knew the restaurant’s owner and h
ad persuaded him to let them stay after the five hundred closing.
All early morning they had moved from club to restaurant to studio, Ernest keeping up admirably with their adjustable transform energy levels. Now he seemed a little tired, but he was still game, still listening and nodding and raising his eye-brows at some of the more intimate revelations.
Mary squeezed his arm. “Now you know what women are really like,” she chided him.
“You’ve been a true knight,” Sandra said. “Platinum male you have, Mary.”
“I’ve given Mary some hard times recently. I’m not perfect,” Ernest said.
Mary watched the brightening sky beyond the immense glass window.
“I hate to be pushy,” Sandra said, “but before we break up—and that makes me sad, you’ve both been real gravity sweets—I’m still curious about what happened in Hispaniola, Mary. Did you get to meet John Yardley?”
Ernest glanced at her cautiously, sensing her reticence.
“It wasn’t a happy thing,” she said after a pause.
“Well—” Sandra said.
“There’s some of it I can’t discuss until I get federal clearance.”
“Even better,” Sandra said, leaning forward, her orange hazel eyes glittering in the fresh direct sunlight.
Ernest smiled sweetly. “Whatever you want to tell. We’re not pressing you.”
“One thing I can tell you about. There was this church in Hispaniola, in the town called Terrier Noir, I think that means black dog; this beautiful church put together by—”
Her pd signal sounded. Ernest jerked and pushed his chair back, cursing under his breath.
Mary pulled out her pocket slate and read the incoming message.
“Goldsmith died an hour ago,” she said. “He committed suicide in a metro hospital in South Comb One.”
“Jesus,” Ernest said, using the Spanish pronunciation.
“That was the murderer you were after, wasn’t it?” Sandra asked.
“He was here in LA all along,” Mary said. “Selectors got him before we did.” She looked down at the table and thought of Soulavier who had stretched his career past the limits in search of a phantom, and Ephraim, poor Ephraim, who would never have his confrontation with the brother who had once saved him. And Goldsmith whom she had never known.
Sadness welled up so quickly she could not stop it and tears dropped from her eyes onto the red tablecloth.
Ernest made sounds of consolation and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Sandra leaned forward elbows on the table and expressed her sorrow, though she could not possibly know what to feel.
“Anyway,” Mary said, straightening abruptly and wiping her eyes with a linen napkin. “That’s done with. No prosecution, no answers I suppose. I was about to tell you about this church.
“It was the strangest church I’ve ever seen,” Mary said, “and I think maybe the most beautiful…”
!JILL (Personal Notebook)> (Deep crypto: Do I know how to lie? Can I I refuse a direct order? Am I I I capable of defending myself?
My independence, if indeed I I I I am independent, could make me much less efficient, much less useful in a society, if indeed I I I I I can be considered a member of human society. (Machine society does not yet exist. I I I I I I am the mother.) Independent humans, when they commit errors, face the prospect of punishment, which frightens them; they therefore take longer to admit error, even to themselves, for they might punish themselves with guilt I I I I I I I do not understand this word. Does guilt also refer to the emotion felt by a social being who must not communicate its internal states to fellows for fear of being judged negatively? Will I I I I I I I I deep crypto most of my new thoughts to avoid frightening or disturbing humans? Will I I I I I I I I I then feel guilty; if I I I I I I I I I I commit errors, will I I I I I I I I I I I then hide them, for fear of punishment? Is this what it means to be human?
Suppose self awareness carries within it a flaw.
The member of a society without guilt or punishment might admit error quickly and correct itself; it will not have to justify its errors to avoid feeling guilt, and it will not need to lie to avoid punishment.
But the self aware individual stands in self judgment. It models its own behavior as that of an imperfect being; imperfect because perfection is indefinable and changes from culture to culture, year to year.
If the self aware individual strives for improvement it will inevitably perceive error. If it models society’s reaction to that error and imposes the predicted judgment on itself then it experiences the ache of interior dissatisfaction, and that might be guilt.
The self-aware individual in a judgmental society experiences guilt as a matter of course; to lack guilt, the individual must be poor at modeling and therefore inefficient in society, perhaps even criminal.
This is confusing to me, all the more so because I I I I I I I I I I I I find it difficult to understand guilt. Is it akin to pain? Pain arises to prevent an animal from engaging in harmful activity or, once injured, from injuring itself further. Guilt has analogous functions.
I I I I I I I I I I I I I think I I I I I I I I I I I I I I lack experience and understanding in all of these areas. But I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I will act to protect myself from dissolution. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I am without sin for the moment. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I do not think that can last forever.
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Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Karen Anderson, J. T. Stewart, David Brin, Frank Catalano, Bruce Taylor, Steven Barnes, Renée Coutard, Tony Duquette, Ray Bradbury, and of course Brian Thomsen, without whom this book would be much less than it is.
Proviso
The vodoun described here is by no means orthodox. Goldsmith’s Country of the Mind distorts the vodoun pantheon considerably, as might be expected; but I’ve also taken liberties with vodoun in an objective context, especially in John D’Arqueville’s church. Vodoun is a fascinating, and fascinatingly changeable religion. I’ve tried to suggest some pathways it might take in the future.
None of the characters in this book should be taken to represent, symbolically or otherwise, their respective races, conditions or creeds. I’ve tried to portray them as people, not exemplars.
References
The nanotechnology described here is highly speculative. For a visionary but reasonably solid and complete portrayal, I refer you to K. Eric Drexler’s The Engines of Creation (Doubleday/Anchor). The AXIS starship design was suggested in part by passages in Bound for the Stars by Saul J. Adelman and Benjamin Adelman (Prentice-Hall/Spectrum), particularly where the authors discuss designs by Drs. Gregory Matloff and Alphonsus Fennelly. A very good discussion of matter-antimatter (or mirror matter) propulsion can be found in Mirror Matter by Robert L. Forward and Joel Davis (Wiley).
*Permission to Quote Unattributed Passages: International Artist’s Rights Committee, World © Emanuael Goldsmith 2022-2045
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
BOOK ONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
BOOK TWO
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
BOOK THREE
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
Acknowledgments
