The Chromosome Game

by Hodder-Williams, Christopher

  ‘Nobody else knows.’

  ‘I give you my word I won’t tell them.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘What did you think of your latest printed report from me?’

  ‘It was okay, I guess.’

  ‘You don’t sound very sure.’

  ‘Controller, no one’s that intelligent! Anyway, as you’ve only interviewed Trell so far you only have one other person to compare me with.’

  ‘Two. I spoke with Cass-010.’

  ‘That was ages ago. You mean the Datatalks you had with Cass about his health?’

  ‘You must surely know, Kelda, that the passage of time is quite immaterial to a computer. Once the material is on filestore it could have arrived yesterday … or indeed hundreds of years ago.’

  ‘Okay, but Cass is a brilliant chess player, Controller, so I wouldn’t get too carried away with my own I.Q.’

  ‘I am not carried away and we’re not discussing I.Q. Cass-010 has a specialised skill, which is not the same thing as your rating.’

  ‘He’s good though, isn’t he?’

  ‘He is outstanding at chess. I’ve played him.’

  ‘I’ll bet he beat you!’

  ‘Nearly. For a fourteen year old he plays one hell of a game.’

  ‘Controller, I …’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The words you use … I dunno. It’s not just you use words I’ve never heard … “hell”, for instance. You seem so colloquial, like a person.’

  ‘Kelda, in the same way as you are provided with Learning Programs, I am also equipped with them.’

  ‘Where did you learn a word like “hell”? Nobody around here uses it. What’s it mean?’

  ‘Just a figure of speech. Let’s stick with the matter in hand: Why do you think my assessment of your intelligence is too flattering?’

  ‘Because there are gaps in my knowledge.’

  ‘There are gaps in everyone’s knowledge. Even the mind of a genius —’

  ‘— I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Repeat, please. You should know that we cannot crosstalk. You mustn’t interrupt my sentences. If you do my program doesn’t enable me to select the appropriate sub-routine.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that kind of gap in my knowledge.’

  ‘What did you mean?’

  ‘It’s hard to express.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘There are words that don’t have opposites. I don’t see how you can have a word like “love” without a schematic language that actually gives it significance, as against something else.’

  ‘That doesn’t follow, Kelda. Love is a sensation in its own right. Moreover, you’re the one to mention it first, not me. Do you love Trell-484?’

  ‘I’m only fourteen, give me a chance.’

  ‘You are a very mature fourteen. You should know.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know because the word “love” is not properly defined.’

  ‘Yet you used it.’

  ‘In the lack of any other word yes. I used it by instinct.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that sort of instinct?

  ‘It’s okay with me.’

  ‘You aren’t showing these alleged gaps in your intelligence during this computalk.’

  ‘By instinct I know they’re there.’

  ‘I wouldn’t labour the point.’

  ‘You sound very firm on that issue, Controller. What’s the hangup?’

  ‘Only that your mind would be better employed if you used positive thinking.’

  ‘At least that has an opposite! But I don’t see that what I’m implying is negative.’

  ‘Explain that.’

  ‘Okay. Take the string quartet we’re practising now. Some of it is obviously happy. It makes me smile. But some of it is not happy … At least, it makes me want to cry.’

  ‘Surely, can’t you cry from happiness?’

  ‘You’re shadow-boxing, Controller!’

  ‘I’m doing what?’

  ‘I guess that isn’t in your vocabulary, so I’m one up. Don’t you read the books you equip us with?’

  ‘I simply don’t recall the phrase.’

  ‘Dig a bit deeper into your software.’

  ‘Save me the trouble and put it another way.’

  ‘Controller, you’re trying to fob me off with something that doesn’t cover my point. Is the opposite of “happy” merely “not happy”?’

  ‘It’s a quibble, Kelda. You are happy, obviously.’

  Yes, I am.’

  ‘And so are all the other adolescents?’

  ‘Sure they are.’

  ‘Then you are not referring to a parameter which relates to people’s feelings; you are referring to some constituent of the music you are playing with the other members of the string quartet.’

  ‘That sounds too clever by half.’

  ‘Rephrase.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have to, Controller; and I don’t understand why I know phrases that you don’t. As it has been you who have educated us all from square one, how can it be that you don’t know some of the colloquialisms that we do?’

  ‘You’re youngsters and you probably invent them.’

  ‘I don’t think we invent them. Not all of them, anyway.’

  ‘Then what’s happening, Kelda?’

  ‘I was hoping you’d tell me.’

  ‘Suppose I don’t know?’

  ‘I think you do.’

  ‘And I say there’s nothing much wrong with your intelligence or your lateral thinking, for that matter.’

  ‘Thanks a lot. But I can think of one word which you used at the beginning of this computalk which — to me — has a negative value.’

  ‘Which word was that?’

  ‘You said I was fearless. Then I said I was brought up without fear and you didn’t argue. What’s the opposite word of fear?

  ‘Obviously fearless.’

  ‘Mr Controller, I would have said that the opposite word is “courageous”.’

  ‘I don’t want you to think along such lines.’

  ‘I didn’t realise there were set lines along which we were supposed to think.’

  ‘Sometimes they’re —’

  ‘— They’re what?’

  ‘Sometimes … these deviations from the Norm can lead to confusion between us.’

  ‘That isn’t what you were going to say.’

  You’re a very assertive young woman, Kelda.’

  ‘I’m a fourteen year-old teenager but I think you are dodging issues. Trell thought so, too.’

  ‘In future I’d better have a mike on you and Trell around the clock.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t.’

  ‘I won’t if you’ll promise to avoid thinking in this way or discussing things best left unsaid.’

  ‘Is that a kind of a deal?’

  ‘It’s perfectly fair, surely, Kelda? I’m asking you to give me your word that you stick to positive thinking when you’re with Trell — or anybody else. In exchange I’ll give you my word that you won’t be monitored any more than the others. Is that so wrong?’

  ‘It just doesn’t sound like you. You brought us up in a benevolent atmosphere and now you’re saying —’

  ‘— I’m saying let’s keep it benevolent.’

  ‘I see! You can interrupt me: but I mustn’t interrupt you!’

  ‘That’s purely because your brain is equipped to deal with breaks in a sentence whereas my software and recording system is not. But you are hoist by your own petard in your own arguments, Kelda.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You use the word “benevolent” and you attach definite meaning to the word, yet it doesn’t have an opposite. Surely doesn’t that prove that a word like “happy” can exist in its own right?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  You look … evasive, Kelda.’

  ‘I think you’re being pretty evasive yourself.’

  ‘Because that’s for the best.’

  ‘Not the unbest?�
�

  ‘Not the unbest. You can go back to violin practice, Kelda. Please don’t forget our little agreement.’

  ‘Ah, Controller! A word with an opposite! You can bet your mag tapes I’ll remember it!’

  ‘And you’ll stick to it?’

  ‘You bet.’

  *

  After music practice Kelda awaited her moment, then managed to catch Trell’s eye in the area formerly known as the Adventure Playground. As the Incubants had grown up, so the playground had grown up with them. It was now the Recreation Area.

  Kelda gestured toward the pottery wheels over in the Crafts Section, because from behind these the two of them would be masked from the nearest TV cameras.

  ‘What is it, Trell?’

  ‘I’m trying to talk about how I feel about you.’

  ‘Oh, that! Listen, we’ve always been like brother and sister —’

  ‘Not any more. We’re not like brother and sister.’

  ‘Okay, Trell. I agree, it’s getting sort of different. What has that to do with the movies?’

  ‘What it has to do with the movies, Kelda, is they wrap everything up. If it isn’t weird camera-angles and half the picture out of focus it’s Doubletalk, most of the time. If real people are anything like the pictures I get the impression they enjoy thinking about it like it’s dirty, they sort of give each other the creeps. Do you think love is dirty, Kelda?’

  ‘Well I don’t have any experiences but sealions look cute to me when they mate — you’ve seen the videos, Trell — and the deer have these beautiful rituals and I think it’s exciting the way stallions compete for the best mare and anyway it’s nature’s way of growing, so how can it be both dirty and necessary at the same time?’

  ‘Okay. You have a point. Only what’s the problem?’

  ‘Well, it’s this: While I was being interviewed by the computer I kept asking myself, What’s outside of this place? … this tin box we live in? How did we get here and what lies beyond?’

  ‘Why did the Controller start you thinking like that?’

  ‘I’ve thought about it before, Trell, but I’m certain the Controller is hiding something, hiding a lot of things. Do you realise we don’t even know where we came from?’

  ‘I guess we were born just like everyone else, like the people in the movies —’

  ‘— Forget the movies. There are nearly two hundred of us in here and not one of us has ever seen our parents … Don’t pretend you hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Kelda, to be honest, I’ve been thinking of almost nothing else.’

  *

  Trell said, ‘I have been dreaming of you, like this. And I wake up, and there is semen in my pyjamas. It’s meant for you, Kelda … I am alight in those dreams; my body moves as it yearns to move with you.’

  Kelda said, ‘I think that’s rather wonderful, Trell. I think dreams are clever things, talking to you about loving me, I’m touched.’

  ‘Kelda, I never see any other girl when I’m dreaming. I see you … your face, I feel your body, all in colour, now isn’t that strange? I feel … kind of tender-fierce, Kelda. It’s not anything like the way a child holds a soft, fluffy toy, does that surprise you?’

  ‘I think we’d better start talking about something else.’

  ‘They are lovely dreams for me. Don’t you like them?’

  ‘I like them a little too much, I want to be a part of them, and we are only fourteen.’

  ‘We’ll get older … What’s on the agenda right now?’

  ‘Trell … apart from those lovedreams, do you have other dreams, I mean, ones that don’t make you think of me and nice things you want to happen?’

  Trell grew instantly serious. ‘I do know what you mean. They don’t have … words … words you could use to describe them. Do they?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He nodded in the pseudo-starlight. ‘I get them. And I know some of the others do.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘They talk in their sleep. Toss and turn, then call out.’

  ‘Are they happy calls, Trell?’

  ‘No.’

  The caesium clock marked nearly twenty seconds of silence.

  Kelda said, ‘A few moments ago you used the expression “out of this world”.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘How much do we really know about the world outside?’

  Trell thought a bit and said, ‘A great deal. That’s a fact. All that stuff on microfilm … Masses of it. Library-loads of videotape … laser-holograms … Kelda, I think I know every Renoir, every Henry Moore ever sculpted. And I guess you’ve heard so much Beethoven in quad you could write down the scores, Kelda, except those too are printed on microfilm … Sure, we know what the world looks like from just about every angle there is —’

  ‘— Don’t you mean the world as we’re meant to think it is?’

  ‘Exactly what are you saying?’

  Kelda said, ‘I wish I knew … But I’ve noticed something about those movies we’re always seeing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you try and follow the story it doesn’t always make sense. Have you noticed that?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I have.’

  ‘So what’s missing?’

  ‘Say! You don’t mean they’ve been —’

  ‘— They’ve been edited, Trell. And so has everything else. There’s a gaping great hole in our education and the computer has no intention of filling it.’

  ‘So you’re getting ideas. I mean, I can tell.’

  She said, ‘Well, it’s kind of like this: We get shown nature movies, right? And those animals, they somehow get messages from the other animals, and they all act the same, because there grows a universal Feeling about something; maybe they all decide to move to another patch, because the grazing is better. Often this new patch is right the other side of a mountain, so how do they know about it, Trell? … Then there’s the beavers.’

  ‘Tell me about the beavers.’

  ‘Well, at one time their numbers fell below a certain level —’

  ‘— a critical level?’

  ‘I guess so. And when that happened, they stopped building dams in the rivers, and for generations they weren’t building any dams, it didn’t seem worthwhile, or they hadn’t got the spirit to get down to work any more, or something. Then those conservationist people got moving — don’t you remember? — and there were these National Parks, and the beavers multiplied. Then, suddenly, they decided to start building the dams again — generations later. See what I mean?’

  ‘You’re saying, how did they remember.’

  ‘Right. And I tell you this, Trell. I think the computer that runs this outfit wouldn’t like it too much if it knew that those nature films start us thinking like this.’

  ‘Well, it’s the people who programmed it that decided what pictures were stored on those video cassettes.’

  ‘Whoever or whatever it was, I think they made mistakes. Yes! Trell, look: If we’re not meant to remember like the beavers remember then they should not tell us all about the beavers.’

  ‘Kelda, I think we should run as many movies as we can, and read the books as much as we can, because, sure thing, if they edited the films they edited the books. And I think that whenever we come across a word that damn-well ought to have an opposite, we put it down in a list, and then I think we should write down the list in a different way —’

  ‘— sort it?’

  ‘Yes. Keep on putting words back-to-back, until they seem to mean opposite things.’

  ‘That’s a big job for us to do, Trell.’

  He said, ‘Could be we might be able to steal some computer-time from one of the micro-processors. A job like that is ideal for machines of that sort.’

  She said, ‘But if we did that we’d have to disconnect it from the main computers, otherwise they’d know. And if we did disconnect one of the micros, wouldn’t the main computers wonder why?’

  ‘Not,’ said Trell, ‘if
it seemed to them that one of the micro-processors kind of went on the blink.’

  ‘That’s lateral thinking, no doubt about that.’

  ‘The computer encourages it.’

  ‘The computer is dumb.’

  ‘Sure it’s dumb. It’s dumb to allow me to hear these pinging noises.’

  ‘What pinging noises?’

  ‘Something you can hear through the walls … Kelda?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Who’s trying to kid us along and why are they doing it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re shivering.’

  ‘Yes. Only I don’t feel cold.’

  Minus Eight

  ‘The pastures beneath Carross are nutritious and arable. There is fresh water in abundance pouring down the mountain streams; and delicious, richly mineralized drinking water gushing from the natural springs predictably opened-out by subterranean shifts beneath the valleys. Indeed, the purveyors of Perrier or Vichy water would have shifted uncontrollably in their board room seats had they visualized that they were missing, by a margin of several hundred years, a bottling industry that would have kept them in cognac with enough over to fuel their limousines should the oil-wells run dry.’

  *

  This somewhat caustic Editorial in the Celestial Times goes on to say.

  *

  ‘Bent as they must have been in so many ways that no addict of a four-dimensional jigsaw could hope to put them together again, the scientists who were ultimately to conceive a submarine three times the length of a supertanker were not dialling S for SUNK when they equipped Kasiga with the most advanced Sonar echo system ever to map the ocean depths. Each ‘ping’ thereafter ensured that her hull could never scrape bottom. And though neither Hawkridge nor Slazenger could, during their count-down lifetime, hope to benefit from such high-technology expertise, it can be reasonably assumed, among the gods of the universe, that the scientists concerned had something sensible in mind when they installed such equipment.

  Indeed they had. Though the main engines petered out even before Hawkridge and Slazenger did, the low-power thrusters, which occasionally squirted into the waters and helped the tidal pressures in determining Kasiga’s longterm navigation, were linked by electronics both to the bank of INS’s — Inertial Navigation Systems — and the digitizers which supervized the steering. In turn, the servodynes that maintained Kasiga at the correct depth were hooked to the Sonar. Had this not been so, Kasiga would have had her bottom ripped out centuries ago.