The Best of Both Worlds and Other Ambiguous Tales - [SSC]

by Brian Stableford

  In the first place, the ataraxia that I was now experiencing would become a perennially and voluntarily recoverable state of mind. I would remain able to savor the existential rewards of emotion, if and when I so wished, but I would also be able to rid myself of its more exacting claims. The empire of reason would be secured, not by the extermination of emotion but by its careful subjugation; emotions would become my loyal and contented servants, no longer bidding for mastery of my consciousness or posing any anarchic threat to my peace of mind.

  In the second place, my mind would no longer be isolated, capable of making contact with other minds only through the media of sight and sound, by means of language and image-making. The intimate connection that I would gradually establish with the infant to which I was playing host would eventually be severed when the time came for the child to move on to the next phase in its development, but that link would be replaced, initially by another infant of the same sort, but eventually—as my own slow metamorphosis moved into other phases—by a series of children that were already more advanced in their development. I would never again be without companionship of the most intimate sort imaginable, nor would I be restricted to the company of new-borns.

  When the time came for me to play foster-parent to children of a more advanced sort, I would be able to take the opportunity to leave my homeworld, because I would then be capable of the kind of dormancy required by long interstellar journeys. I would become a citizen of a vast interstellar culture, capable of the kinds of radical metamorphosis that were frequently necessary to facilitate life on other worlds. In time, perhaps, I might even be equipped for intergalactic travel.

  My interlocutor also took the opportunity to explain the logic of this way of life, in evolutionary terms. Among the books in my father’s library was the Chevalier de Lamarck’s Philosophic zoologique, which my father had acquired from a French acquaintance, who had received it from the author’s own hand after attending one of his lectures in the Jardin des Plantes. I was, therefore, aware of the Chevalier’s assertion that every living creature is possessed of an innate urge to improvement, whose cumulative effects, expressed across the generations, resulted in the gradual progressive evolution of new species. Mary McQueen told me that the sense in which this was true of Earthly species was more metaphorical than literal, but that there was indeed a universal process of natural selection that tended to favor the survival and reproduction of some individuals in every generation of every species, while others less fitted for survival and successful reproduction made proportionately less contribution to the following generation.

  Although such vulgar modifications as fleshly resilience, the ability to avoid predators and efficiency in gathering food were all favored by natural selection, my informant told me, the most important factors thus favored—and hence the most progressive, in Lamarckian terms—were those promoting better parental care. Humans, she said, deserve to be reckoned the most advanced members of the native biosphere because their infants benefit from far better and more varied parental care, and are thus enabled to embrace much slower and far more intricate processes of maturation.

  By comparison with the extraterrestrial visitors, of course, human maturation remains relatively rapid and primitive; the visitors had taken the process to a much more elaborate extreme. One of the gifts of the extra measure of progress they were thus permitted was, of course, to develop processes of personal and collective evolution that were authentically Lamarckian, allowing every individual of their species—including individuals of other kinds recruited into their company—to embark on a process of individual progressive evolution, in which the possibilities were multitudinous.

  There were, of course, many matters of further detail that my scrupulous educator took it upon herself to enumerate and explain. I asked numerous questions, all of which were answered to my complete satisfaction. In the end, though, the force of the argument was simply and manifestly overwhelming. What I was being offered, with the utmost generosity, was a chance to transcend the vestigial primitive aspects of my own humanity: an opportunity to become, by slow degrees, a much higher kind of being, less closely akin to apes than my fellow men, more nearly reminiscent of angels.

  I was not in the least surprised, when I understood my situation, that not one of the more-than-a-thousand human males to whom this offer had formerly been made had turned it down. No creature in whom the empire of reason was secure could ever have done otherwise.

  “Yes,” I said, gladly, when the offer was confirmed.” I will certainly agree to join you in the capacity of foster-parent, with a view to becoming one of your company, to the full extent of my eventual abilities.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Grayling,” the shadowy Mary McQueen replied. “I felt sure that you would be able to see and appreciate the logic of the situation.”

  * * * *

  In order to be invested with my foster-child I had, of course, to meet the extraterrestrial Mother Superior whose daughter Mary was. Because my preconceptions had been partly shaped by the analogy Mary had drawn between the world within the moor and an ant-hive, I half-expected to encounter an individual of gargantuan size lodged in some vast central chamber, perpetually attended by hordes of workers dutifully transporting her nourishment and incessantly bearing away the eggs that she laid. That aspect of the analogy was, however, misleading in the extreme.

  In spite of their tentative investment in the arts of parental care, the reproductive strategy of Earthly ants is essentially crude, involving the production of large numbers of offspring. The extraterrestrial visitors did indeed combine the best features of Earthly mammals with those of Earthly insects—indeed, as the description of their existential condition that I have just given will readily testify, they were no longer prisoners to any kind of taxonomic classification. At any rate, their rate of reproduction was essentially sedate. They had been present on the Earth for seven centuries without having had the need to recruit many more than a thousand human males to their cause.

  The Mother Superior’s quarters were, in fact, relatively modest, as befitted her modest size. She was only a little larger than Mary McQueen, and although she was certainly plump, she was by no means obese. She was, however, intensely committed to her role as a specialist in reproduction, to the extent that she seemed almost to radiate maternal love.

  Thus far in the course of my adventures in the underworld my emotions had been subject to a kindly but generalized suppression. When I was ushered into the Mother Superior’s gloomy apartment, however, there was a noticeable change in the atmosphere. Its warm sickly sweetness was replaced by something more refreshing and bracing, which had the seemingly-paradoxical effect of reigniting at least some of my emotions and appetites. I did not feel that I was at all out of control, but when I came into the presence of the Mother Superior and felt the radiance of her love, I also felt free to return it.

  Although I had never known my own mother, and my father had never made any effort to provide me with any kind of substitute, I had never felt unduly deprived in consequence, and I did not feel that the Mother Superior’s welcoming attitude was rushing to fill any kind of experiential void. I did, however, relish the opportunity to return her affection: to lavish upon her all the stored-up affection that I might, in happier circumstances, have been able to lavish upon my own mother for twenty-and-one years.

  I could not tell, with any degree of certainty, what the extraterrestrial Mother Superior looked like. Her chamber was not blessed with much illumination, and her face was as vague as my guide’s had become, although she certainly had eyes with which to study me, and doubtless saw me far more clearly than I saw her. She was clad in black, like her sisters, and I do know that her coat—which was presumably some kind of tegument integral to her bodily structure—was soft and warm, with a texture not unlike that of wool. She was capable of standing erect and of sitting down, and she had five-fingered hands that were both expressive and tender, but I had the impression that her form
was not such a close imitation of human physique as Mary’s. Mary’s outward form had, of course, to be a very close imitation in order for her to pass for a cousin of the Raggandales.

  The Mother Superior’s voice was very musical, but her command of English was somewhat limited; unlike Mary, she had never been up to the surface to insinuate herself, however briefly, into the human social world. Even so, we talked, not about biology and evolution but about more personal matters. In particular, we talked about Emily, and the tragedy of her death. While remaining intensely sympathetic, the Mother Superior explained to me how futile it is to mourn the deaths of creatures which are by nature ephemeral, and why it is a perverted use of emotion to surrender oneself to grief so completely that one becomes impotent in the more elevated sphere of intellectual ability. She was right, of course, but that was not all that mattered to me: what mattered more was that she was kind, that she was helping me to explore the perversities of my own sentiments in order that I might become calmer, happier and better equipped to deal with the vicissitudes of existence.

  Longevity, the Mother Superior told me, is not necessarily a good thing. In order to reap the benefits of the condition, one must adapt one’s frame of mind to its demands as well as its possibilities. I was grateful for her generosity in making time to give me that advice, and very grateful indeed for the tenderness of her explanations. When the time came for her to give me her new-born infant to care for, I was more than ready to receive it.

  Unlike Earthly ant-queens, alien Mothers Superior do not lay eggs; like humans, they nurture their young in embryo for some considerable time. They give birth by means of a special kind of kiss, which transfers the infant directly into the gut of a recipient host, from whose small intestine it makes its own patient way to the site of its temporary integration.

  I had kissed Emily more than once, but I had never experienced anything remotely like the kiss of the Mother Superior. Modesty forbids me to give a more detailed description, but it is only appropriate for me to report that the experience changed my life, and showed me what the true value of emotion is, to an intellect capable of its wise control.

  I was taken away from the Mother Superior’s quarters by the same guide that had brought me. Mary led me up through the bowels of the hill, back to the surface of the Earth and the interior of the near-perpetual cloud that sat atop Arnlea Moor, which was now dark grey in the gathering twilight. Indeed, she led me further than that, taking me down the slope until we were completely clear of the mist, and accompanying me almost to the bounds of Haughtonlin.

  “You had best make your own way from here,” she said. “It will soon be dark, but I think you can find your way back to Stonecroft without difficulty. The moon is three-quarters full and untroubled by clouds at present.”

  “I can find my way, now that I’ve a path to guide me,” I assured her. “Shall I see you again?”

  “Of course you will,” she said. “You must visit me at Raggandale very soon, so that we might become good friends.”

  I was glad, at the time, to hear that we were to become good friends, although I realized almost immediately that it was a necessary provision, to protect both of us from the hazards of loneliness. My gladness was slightly compromised, however, by the anxiety that any new friendship might be seen as a betrayal of Emily’s love and Emily’s memory.

  I felt compelled, in consequence, to go directly to Emily’s grave and kneel beside it, in order to offer her an apology and an explanation.

  “I am not the man that I used to be, Emily,” I told her. “I have grown, and it is time for me to move on. I’m a foster-father now, and I have new responsibilities. I want to know, though, that I have not forgotten you and never will. I am capable, still, of every emotion in the human spectrum, and I shall treasure my grief as I shall treasure my love for you, which will never be emulated or replaced. In time, I suppose, Mary and I might marry. Perhaps we shall take the Grand Tour together. We might even range much further, in time, although it will doubtless be prudent to wait until more nests have been established in Africa and the Far East, before we take the slightest risk with the welfare of the infant. I always yearned to be an explorer, as you know, and now I shall be able to take my explorations further than I ever dreamed.”

  I hesitated momentarily after pronouncing that word, which produced a faint echo of doubt in my mind—but the echo was immediately overridden by my newly-sanitized intellect. “No, Emily,” I continued, “what happened on the moor today was no dream. There will be no idle dreaming for me, from now on: all my dreams will be ordered and constructive. I shall have a great deal of work to do, in furthering the cause of my adoptive folk by every means available to me, including my pen, although my first and foremost duty will be to the child whose primary education is my current mission in life. I shall love and cherish the Mother Superior’s child, Emily, and I shall be loved and cherished in my turn. I still have a duty, of course, to the ephemerae of our own kind, towards whose permanent liberation from the frailties of primitive flesh I shall work tirelessly, through centuries to come. The work will be slow, and it will be painstaking, but in the end, it will all be worthwhile. In the fullness of time, the entire evolutionary legacy of Earth’s biosphere will be incorporated into the flesh and spirit of our adoptive cousins, ready for exportation to the worlds of other stars. Everyone, then, will have the best of both our worlds.”

  Emily could make no reply, of course, but I had known her well, and I was certain that she would have judged what I had told her to be a wonderful prospect. She would have understood, and would have given me her blessing.

  “I shall make a permanent record of what has happened to me, Emily,” I told her, “in order that our secret will have an objective existence of its own. In two or three hundred years time, if the Mother Superior permits, it might become possible to publish it, or at least to show it to my children...which is to say, my foster-children. I doubt that you have any cause to be jealous of Mary, in that regard.”

  I had a sudden vision, then, of looking into Emily’s tender blue eyes, and my eyes filled with tears. I did not blink the tears away immediately, but savored their implications to the full. Then, by a voluntary effort, I supplemented the vision with another, of looking into Mary’s much darker eyes.

  Mary’s pupils seemed so utterly black as to be windows into the infinity of interstellar space.

  “Tomorrow, or the next day,” I told my dead beloved, “I’ll ride to Raggandale to pay my formal respects.”

  Emily smiled, at least in my imagination, and again I savored the tingle of emotion, which was followed by a faint but distinct echo in the other soul that now dwelt within me, in blissful harmony with my own.

  At last, I thought, I have begun not merely to perceive but to comprehend the Divine Plan, in all its richness, promise and beauty. Father would be proud of me—and Mother too.

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  * * * *

  THE HIGHWAY CODE

  Tom Haste had no memory of his emergence from the production line, but the Company made a photographic record of the occasion and stored it in his archive for later reference. He rarely reflected upon it, though; the assembly robots and their human supervisors celebrated, each after their own fashion, but there were no other RTs in sight, except for as-yet-incomplete ones in embryo in the distant background. Not that Tom was any kind of xenophobe, of course—he liked everyone, meat or metal, big or small—but he was what he was, which was a long-hauler. His life was dedicated to intercontinental transport and the Robot Brotherhood of the Road.

  Tom’s self-awareness developed gradually while he was in the Test Program, and his first true memories were concerned with the artistry of cornering. Cornering was always a central concern with artics, especially giants like Tom, who had a dozen containers and no less than fifty-six wheels. Tom put a lot of effort into the difficult business of mastering ninety-degree turns, skid control and zigzag management, and he was as proud of his achievements
as only a nascent intelligence can be. He was proud of being a giant, too, and couldn’t understand why humans and other RTs were always making jokes about it.

  In particular, Tom couldn’t understand why the Company humans were so fond of calling him “the steel centipede” or “the sea serpent”, since he was mostly constructed of artificial organic compounds, didn’t have any legs at all, wouldn’t have a hundred of them even if his wheels were counted as legs, and would undoubtedly spend his entire career on land. He didn’t understand the explanations the humans gave him if he asked—which included such observations as the fact that actual centipedes didn’t have a hundred legs either, and that there was actually no such thing as a sea serpent— but he learned soon enough that humans took a certain delight in giving robots explanations that weren’t, precisely because robots found it difficult to fathom them. Tom soon gave up trying, content to leave such mysteries to the many unfortunates who had to deal with humans on a face-to-face basis every day, such as ATMs and desktop PCs.

  Tom didn’t stay long in the Test Program, which was more for the Company’s benefit than his. Once his self-awareness had reached full fruition he could access all his pre-loaded software consciously without the slightest difficulty, and there were no detectable glitches in his cognitive processing. So far as he was concerned, life was simple and life was good—or would be, once he could get out on the road.