by Manda Benson
Jananin stared at the door where he had gone for a moment, stony faced, her posture rigid. “Before you accuse me of it, I shall say that I will stand by your decision, and I am not tempted in the remotest by the prospect of destroying the evidence of Pilgrennon’s illegal research. My objection to this plan is based not only on the concern for the safety of all involved, but also on the likelihood that you will throw away your own life in your attempt to realise an unrealistic ideal. Ironically, you are the only one of Pilgrennon’s experiments that was a success. Peter is potentially a liability and a danger to society, and Cale from the reports I have read barely functions in society at all.”
Dana glared at her. “Peter is still a living person. And Cale is my brother. He is your son. Just because he doesn’t care about the economy or being social or other stuff like that, and he’d rather think about beetles, that doesn’t make him any less than other people.”
“No. But you have a future ahead of you. These people do not. You are not sacrificing your own life for theirs. You are not making any kind of exchange. What you are doing is risking throwing away your own life in the pursuit of something unlikely and not worthy on the bigger scale of things.”
“I don’t understand it. The Meritocracy says all people are equal, but they’re not. Not really, are they? If all people are born equal, why do some people have votes that are worth more than others? Why isn’t everyone’s vote worth the same?”
“That was the original premise behind the political party that later was elected into government and put in place the Meritocracy. Originally its name was the Free Democracy Party, and they wanted an end to politics and politicians, and for the electorate to decide all policies by public referendum. They trialled it and it didn’t work; the practicalities of it were total anarchy. The electorate nominated hundreds of petty, inconsequential topics for referendum. A lot of the party’s members became disillusioned and left at that point, not prepared to accept that their ideals didn’t translate into reality. What remained of it was left to swallow its own ideals and reform based on a compromise.
“What you’re talking about, and what the Free Democracy Party wanted was genuine democracy — one vote for everyone on every single issue with the majority declared the winner — it’s unworkable on societies so large and disparate. The Meritocracy is not perfect, but so far no system has been invented that is. At least everyone now has some sort of a say without important issues being drowned out by a cacophony of trivia. At least it is better than the system we had before, where politicians only cared about being charismatic and popular so as to appeal to the lowest common denominator and ensure re-election while the economy stagnated around them because they just could not address controversial topics. Today we have an infrastructure that meets the power demands of the population; at the end of the last government, we had power outages because the governments would not build new powerstations because it made them unpopular. We have scientific research going on around this very building that will ensure this country becomes agriculturally fully self-sufficient. We have adequate funding for our military and research into weapons and defence that make any other country considering invading here think twice. That would never have happened without the Meritocracy.”
“What about the Spokesmen, then? Everyone doesn’t have a say in that.”
“The Spokesmen are...” Jananin sighed. “Do they teach you about Einstein in Physics at school?”
Dana nodded. “E = mc.”
Yes, that is one of his equations. Einstein derived a different equation about the nature of the Universe, and he included in this equation a number called the cosmological constant. The cosmological constant was just an arbitrary number with no significance that had to be included so the equation would balance and account for the observation of the Universe. It means the equation is not perfect, because although it makes sense, something which has no meaning and does not make sense has to be added for it before it can function in practice. I have always seen the Spokesmen as a cosmological constant of the Meritocracy; something which is not in the spirit of the theory, but that has to be included for the Meritocracy to work in practice. If a national emergency happens, or for whatever other reason there is not time to bring a matter to referendum, the Spokesmen are directly nominated by the Electorate to act as a backstop in a crisis. Anyone can be a Spokesman, and any voter can vote for any person they want to act as a Spokesman, so the individuals with the most votes are asked to serve. They are by no means politicians, but they are not what the Meritocracy is intended to be.”
“But you became a Spokesman for the Meritocracy? Even though you think this?”
Jananin got to her feet. “I serve because the Electorate ask me to.” The room had by now become completely dark, and Dana could not make out her face. “You had better sleep now. Tomorrow will be hard, and it may be the last tomorrow you see.” She paused. “And do not tell that nurse about what we intend to do. The last thing we need is her interference on top of Rajesh’s disapproval.”
-16-
OUTSIDE the stable block, the Stormcaller rested on the tall pylons that provided a landing site for it. A stream of people clad in blue RAF uniforms moved incessantly up and down the gantry to it, like a line of ants coming and going.
“Put this armour on.” Jananin pointed to a tangled mass of interlocking plates spread out on a hay bale. “It’s intended to be made specifically for the wearer, but there wasn’t time, so I borrowed a set from the smallest woman I could find on the base.”
Jananin already had her armour on and was strapping tack and equipment to a black horse much like the one Rajesh had ridden. Another horse, more heavily built, skewbald, and with a shaggy mane and dense feathering on its ankles stood quietly at the back of the loose box.
Dana held up what she hoped was the chest piece and tried to work out which way round it was meant to go and how it was supposed to be put on. “Why is this horse different from the other one?”
“Horses are social animals, but the fearless nature of this horse means it’s liable to fight if it’s housed with other fearless horses. Thus, the necessity for a rescue horse companion.”
She gazed outside, at the fields of unnatural crops, at the malevolent bulk of the Stormcaller blocking out the sky and the glass pyramids. “Isn’t all of this technology bad for the environment?”
“Quite the opposite. The crops absorb carbon from the atmosphere, and the Stormcaller is a carbon-neutral mode of transport.”
Dana continued to stare at the Stormcaller. There was something disturbing, almost shocking about its even being there at all. It was not like an aeroplane, or a helicopter, or even an enormous ship; it was like nothing on Earth that had ever been seen before, made either by nature or man. “Don’t you think it looks horrible?”
Jananin heaved a saddle onto the horse’s back and adjusted its position. “No, I think it is a marvellous feat of engineering. And I daresay all the Luddites thought the steam engine Stephenson designed was horrible when they saw it. Yet these days we tend to view such things as quaint and romantic.”
“It’s like, no other species in the history of the planet affects its environment as much as humans do.”
“Who told you that?” Jananin said sharply.
“I don’t know. Lots of people. I thought it was a well-known fact.”
“Well-known, possibly, fact certainly not.”
“Is there another species that affects its environment more than humans?”
“Oh, there have been several. This planet is not some static environment with a fixed number of species that must be preserved in its current form no matter what. Ecosystems and whole planets are evolving, developing entities that change over time and ultimately will be destroyed. In the beginning, there was no life. The first organisms that evolved started photosynthesising and affecting the constitution of the atmospheric gases. That’s a pretty drastic change for a species to cause to its environment, don’t you thi
nk? Probably the dubious honour of the species that had the most drastic consequences on the climate and ultimately caused the biggest extinction would have to go to the first fungi that could break down lignin at the end of the Carboniferous period. Before then, trees locked up carbon from the atmosphere and turned into fossil fuels because nothing existed that could decompose them. As a consequence, the atmosphere changed to be much higher in carbon dioxide and much lower in oxygen, and as most of the animal species at the time were adapted to high levels of oxygen, they became extinct.”
Dana considered this. Photosynthesising organisms. Fungi. “But they’re all... natural.”
“And what makes Man not natural? Did we not evolve on this planet too? What sets Man apart from any other species that is or has been here? How can you make the claim that Man is an aberration when there are no other separate ecosystems at the same stage you know of to make a comparison? Perhaps in this galaxy there may be a great many planets all with a species on them in exactly the same evolutionary niche as Man. Species like our own could be a normal and natural part in the development of a planet in the stage this one is at. We can’t know for sure, because the limitations of our current technology mean we can’t as yet identify other worlds or make contact with different species on them. Man is just one of a long succession of species shifting the equilibrium of an indifferent ecosystem. It’s happened before our species evolved, and it’ll continue to happen after our species goes extinct.”
Dana found a hole in the armour and decided to chance putting her head through. It was made up of narrow, indigo-coloured laminae that flexed slightly when she pressed them. “Is this made of polymer alloy?”
“Naturally.”
What wasn’t made of polymer alloy these days? Dana watched Jananin as she fastened straps and made adjustments to the horse’s equipment. It was easy to see why she had won the Nobel Prize. She had invented something that had, in its various forms, become part of everyday life for nearly everyone. And she had invented the biomechanical synapse that allowed Dana to communicate with computers just by thinking, the same substance that had been implanted in the horse’s brain, and in the wyvern’s and in the birds and rats. Images of the dead rats broken on the blackened ground at the hospital flashed through her mind, followed by a memory of living rats, in cages, where she and Eric had taken the wyvern.
“In Osric’s work there were rats being killed to find out if drugs were harmful. What gives him the right to do that to rats if it’s wrong for Gamma to use animals?”
Jananin turned away from the horse and rested her elbow on the saddle. “Rights are meaningless without responsibilities. Mankind is unique in being able to be responsible. Because of that, people have rights that animals do not. They have a right to use animals for food or research with the accompanying responsibility that they only use animals where necessary and ensure the animals have a good quality of life and do not suffer. An animal like a leopard cannot have such rights because it can’t comprehend the responsibilities. A leopard can’t kill a gazelle humanely; it simply kills it the only way it knows how and would never even think about that. Osric’s research is important for the scientific progression of our society.”
“He tried to kill the wyvern! He’s a sadistic coward.”
Jananin’s eyes flared. “I’ll not have you speak of him like that! There are things about Osric you don’t know. Claims like that are unfounded and ignorant!”
“What things?”
Jananin hefted up what looked like two pairs of trumpets connected with a thick strap and covered in black-and-yellow hazard warning marks, and slung it over the horse’s withers. “None of your business.”
“How do you expect me to understand if you won’t tell me anything?”
“Years ago, Osric was young and idealistic. He was fresh out of university and he had a job in a research laboratory. He did something that would later turn out to be very foolish: he made a blog about his experiments on animals. He wanted to show the humane reality of the work he did and how important it was for making medicines to save lives, and dispel the malicious myths about his profession perpetuated by extremists. Somebody who read the blog traced his IP address through it, and after that a terrorist group began to target him. He received death threats, had a bomb planted under his car, poison sent in the post, people lurking near his house and spreading a hate campaign against him. At the time he lived with a partner and had a newborn son, but the stress of what was happening caused them to part. Osric moved out and his partner and son kept the house. Unfortunately it was too late. The night after he left, someone put a petrol bomb through the letterbox. The fire brigade found the woman and the child trapped together in an upstairs bedroom, both unconscious. She recovered, but his lungs were too young and the smoke had overcome him. If my memory serves me right, he would be about your age now.”
Dana’s mouth was dry. She had never considered what might have happened to Osric in the past, or how it was Jananin might have got to know him. If she ever saw him again, she would see differently.
“The terrorist group on the Internet wrote an insulting obituary, saying Osric’s son’s death was no more significant than the deaths of the rats Osric studied, that the boy deserved to die because humans are a plague upon the Earth.” Jananin hesitated before continuing. “Then I did something that could very well have turned out to be foolish as well. I offered Osric sanctuary in my house. I taught him things, I introduced him to people. I gave him the means to track down the terrorist who murdered his son and to have his revenge.”
Dana forced saliva into her mouth and swallowed. “And then what happened?”
“That is between Osric and the terrorist.” Jananin grimaced. “I have said too much. Do not repeat what I have told you. To anyone.”
The hospital all that time ago — Osric had spied on Dana for Jananin. Doctors weren’t supposed to do that. Their patients’ details were meant to be confidential, and Osric would probably have lost his job if it had been discovered he had helped Jananin kidnap her. “And that’s why Osric helps you?”
“It formed a bond of trust between us. I needed people who would take an oath of silence that they would never break. I had realised by this time I couldn’t stop Pilgrennon alone.”
“But if you had stopped Pilgrennon... if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t exist. So if what he did was wrong, it must be wrong for me to exist.”
“That’s not how it works. You are not wrong. You are just someone who was brought into existence in a wrong way.”
“But if something that’s not wrong came of it, that must mean it wasn’t entirely wrong.”
“There is no such thing as entirely wrong, or indeed entirely right. You have to look at the whole picture. The way Pilgrennon acquired material for his experiments was immoral and illegal. Most of the results of his experiments were braindamaged or deranged; we have him to thank for what we are currently going outside to fight. The overwhelming majority of Pilgrennon’s work had extremely negative consequences. The fact there is an errant data point, that one small facet of it did not, is immaterial compared to the overall trend.”
Dana took a deep breath and tried to keep her voice calm. She did not want this to become a fight, and she was aware that her questions would probably come across as provocative, but she truly could not see where the difference was. “How is making a horse like this one different to making a wyvern? Why is what the Meritocracy does better than what Gamma does?”
“Do you think life is like a children’s story, and that the hero triumphs through use of a white horse with bells on it and a shiny magical sword, even though his adversaries have monsters and guns and engines of destruction? There are no such things as good and evil. There are only things that are done for the greater benefit, and those that are not, and there are forces that can be controlled and can be used, and there are forces that cannot be controlled and should not be used.”
“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s not
that they shouldn’t...” Dana struggled to make sense of the feelings inside her. Rajesh’s horse had never expressed anger, or disgust, or any sort of negative emotion about what had been done to it. The wyvern hadn’t either, although it didn’t like Gamma. “I can’t see why the wyvern is wrong when this is okay.”
Jananin stared at Dana. “Pilgrennon did not know when to stop. The future will be in grave peril if you too do not know where the line must be drawn.”
It was all very well for Jananin to say Ivor’s experiments and the wyvern were wrong, but she didn’t have firsthand experience of it. Jananin wasn’t one of Pilgrennon’s children, and she hadn’t made mental contact with the wyvern, so she had no idea what it felt like to be either of them. Yet this was vitally important. Dana had to understand and be able to justify to herself why they were going out to stop Gamma. She needed a reason to believe she was right and Gamma was wrong, or when they confronted each other it would be hazy and ambiguous like in the dreams again, and Dana feared she would forget why she set out and lose her way. She fought to concentrate, but she couldn’t see it. “But... I can’t. Is there something the matter with me?”
Jananin’s face tensed for a moment, and then her shoulders relaxed. “Perhaps I lay too much responsibility on you. It is easy to forget how young you are when I am thinking all the time of the ramifications of what he did to you. It may be, a better understanding of the issues at stake here will come to you when you are older.”
She had finished equipping the horse now, and she handed Dana a helmet.
“It’s got aluminium foil inside it,” Dana commented.
