A REASONABLE WORLD

by Damon Knight

  Every human being was a unique blend of thought and emotion. In almost every one, no matter how life had deformed or corrupted them, there was an understratum of love and longing for their wounded planet. They knew so much! but their knowledge was divided: One knew banking, another art, another agriculture. Even when they understood what was wrong, they seemed helpless.

  Far more often now than in the past, she found herself in a mind already inhabited by others of her race. It happened in Paris, in the mind of a boulevardier who was thinking rather dull thoughts about his mistresses.

  If only they could share as we do!_______Some do, a little.

  ____________________________But they don’t know it.

  _____________________Open them up?

  Trying, with the newborns.

  It’s harder than we thought.

  Our parent could have told us

  if she had lived._____________________*Sorrow.*

  And indeed, there was sorrow in all of them, never quite absent. Their parent, the wise one: how many mistakes were they making because they had never known her?

  4

  In Huanchaca, Bolivia, Juan Montoya accepted the carton from the man ahead of him, passed it back. The warehouse doors stood open; all the food was coming out, in two streams, hand to hand to hand. Down below there were mule carts, a tractor with a flatbed trailer, two or three pickups, farm wagons, even bicycles.

  Opposite Montoya were three militia, looking on with angry faces. They couldn’t do anything. Montoya laughed and gestured with his chin. The tall one started as if he had been struck. He unslung his rifle, raised it to his shoulder, then fell slowly across it and lay in the dust. The other two bent toward him. They crossed themselves, picked up the dead man. One of them said over his shoulder, “God will punish you.”

  Montoya said cheerfully, “Then why did He never punish you?” The soldier turned his face away.

  In Dr. Owen’s computer tube, calls were stacked up: Maintenance, a Philippine reporter, nothing she felt like responding to right now. Another appeared: Glen Cunningham, with the flag, “D&D.” That might be interesting.

  “Mitzi, Glen,” she said to the computer.

  Cunningham’s head appeared in the tube. “I think we’ve got something on the d-and-d project,” he said.

  “Really? Tell me about it.”

  “Well, one of the problems we had with the old system, it was based on the assumption that the parasite would move in a direct line between one host and another. Then we could set up our apparatus at the right place and destroy it. But it turns out that when you shock the host, the parasite can emerge in a random direction—it doesn’t necessarily go toward the nearest host.”

  “So what’s the answer, Glen?”

  “Rick Adams came up with this—he suggested that if the parasite is some kind of stable energy system, it may have a net charge, and in that case it ought to be possible to draw it out with a strong magnetic field. We tried it, and it checks out in three trials so far. Here’s the apparatus.” He moved back and showed her a device on a tall framework. “This electromagnet generates a field of two hundred oersted. The neat part is that we don’t have to use electroshock or anything invasive to the host. We put the subject’s head against the magnet and turn it on. The parasite, if it’s there, comes out and is held by the magnet; then we zap it with twenty thousand volts, and that’s all she wrote.”

  “That’s marvelous, Glen. One question, how do you verify that the parasite is destroyed?”

  He looked embarrassed. “Only by trying to infect another host, so far. We’d prefer a more positive method, and there might be a way to detect the energy released by the parasite when it’s destroyed, but the way we’re killing it rules that out. We’re still working on it. We’ll come up with something.”

  “I’m sure you will, and meanwhile you’re doing marvelously. You want me to forward this to the National Laboratories?”

  “Yes, and recommend a field trial.”

  “I’ll certainly do that. Good work, Glen.”

  Aaron Burstyn, an experimental detainee, was watching the holo in his cell.

  “We’re talking to Harold W. Geiger, the president of General Motors. Mr. Geiger, there’s an interesting and controversial thing you’ve introduced in your plants recently. You’re trying to motivate your workers to greater productivity by giving them free brain implants which can then be used to stimulate their pleasure centers, or other centers, by the use of a device that provides a metered dosage in their off-work hours. Do I have that right?”

  “Yes, that’s about it, Bob. As you know, we’ve been very, very concerned about turnover and worker morale for several years. This looked like something that might improve those problems.”

  “And how is it working out?”

  “Well, we’re very encouraged, but it’s too soon to say.”

  “About how many workers—what percentage—have signed up for the brain implants?”

  “It’s small so far; that’s why I can’t be definite about results as of yet.”

  “By small do you mean ten percent? Five? One?”

  “It’s in that range.”

  “So you would say there is some resistance to the idea of brain implants?”

  “There’s always resistance to anything new, Bob, as you know.”

  “All right. Now, what’s to prevent someone who has had this implant from stimulating his own brain whenever he feels like it?”

  “Well, the implant has a gadget in it, so it only lets the current through into your brain when it gets a certain kind of signal. In other words, you put this cap on your head, and it’s like a bank account—there are so many seconds of stimulation that you’ve earned by productivity and low absenteeism and so on. There’s a formula, which we’re still working out with the union. So it’s really like a bonus for good performance, and the beauty part of it is, is that it doesn’t harm the worker or lead to the problems we’re trying to correct, like alcohol or drugs do.”

  “What about bootleg decoding devices? There have been some rumors about that.”

  “We’re trying to run down those rumors, but at this point in time I’d say that’s just what they are.”

  “Mr. Geiger, what kind of pleasure does a person experience under this stimulation? Have you tried it yourself?”

  “No, I personally haven’t tried it, but I understand it’s usually just a general kind of pleasure—the way you feel when you’re relaxed and have no worries.”

  “We’ve heard that the implant can stimulate other areas—make a person feel the way they do under the influence of alcohol, for example.”

  “There is a certain amount of choice involved. We try to give people what they want. And, of course, if a person does choose the option you just mentioned, they get all the fun of having a mild buzz on without any of the bad effects.”

  “Can they have a cocaine high, too, without the cocaine?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “A sexual experience?”

  “That’s possible too.”

  “Some of these experiences can be highly addictive, can’t they?”

  “There is no addiction whatsoever, because we’re not giving them drugs in any shape or form.”

  “But speaking generally, wouldn’t you say that a person who has grown used to these experiences would feel deprived if they had to give them up?”

  “Well, there are a lot of things like that. Money, for instance.”

  “Mr. Geiger, say I’m a worker in one of your plants and I decide to quit for some reason. What happens to my brain implant?”

  “Well, you can have it removed if you want, or you can just leave it in. It can’t do any harm.”

  “But I can’t use it anymore?”

  “No, not unless you’ve earned it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Geiger.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Melanie Kurtz made a point of spending some time every day in one of the ten kinderg
arten classes, sometimes working with the children, sometimes watching behind the one-way glass. She had deliberately not familiarized herself with the names and faces of children in the breeding program, who presumably had acquired the parasite at birth, but she could not help trying to guess which ones they were. The whole point, after all, was to try to find out what difference there was between the two populations. She believed in objectivity and rigor, but she also believed in insight.

  “There’s one,” said Lou Willows, who was on duty today behind the mirror in Kindergarten 8. “Hedy, the girl in the red jumper, over there with the ball?”

  “Why do you say that?” Kurtz asked, although she thought she knew.

  “Look at her. See how she’s watching Denny? He’s the one who was crying a minute ago.” Denny had been playing with the big blue and white ball when another boy took it away from him. Then the second kid threw the ball away, and a minute later Hedy had it. The teacher, a conscientious young woman named Levin, had soothed Denny and given him a truck to play with, and the whole thing had been smoothed over. But Hedy kept glancing over at Denny. Now she stood up, fanny higher than her head for a moment. She walked straight over to Denny and put the ball down in the bed of his truck. Denny knocked it away with his fist, then got up and pursued it. Hedy watched him a moment, then picked up the truck and walked away.

  “Now how do you figure that?” asked Lou.

  “Pretty smart.”

  “At two, she’d have to be a genius. I think there’s something else. Sure, she wanted the truck, and she got it. But she gave the ball to Denny because she knew he wanted it.”

  “ESP?”

  “Why does it have to be ESP? She could tell by his behavior.”

  “Yes, and you could be projecting, too.”

  “I know that, and I know we’re not supposed to guess, but I’d be inhuman if I didn’t wonder.”

  5

  In a conference room at SARP, a military think-tank in Akademgorodok, seven high-ranking officers were gathered. Their host was Colonel Professor Arpad Adjarian. The others were representatives of the Russian Army, Navy and Air Force. “During the past year,” Adjarian told them, “there have been over four hundred known cases of the sudden death of a commander at the moment when he was about to give an order for troops to fire or weapons to be launched. In all cases there was no visible sign of violence. The official cause of death, when one was given, was heart failure.

  “Our staff has carefully compared these reports, and we find that in more than two hundred cases the subordinate who stepped forward to fill his superior’s position also fell dead. We have sixty cases in which the same thing happened to a third officer. After that, in all cases, action was abandoned.

  “These cases can no longer be dismissed as coincidence. As the Americans say, ‘Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, three times is evidence of hostile activity.’ We must conclude that there is a force in the world that does not wish war to be fought by conventional methods, a force that is able and willing to impose its will. I point out that these deaths have occurred all over the world, in the socialist as well as the imperialist camps. We are dealing, in other words, with a third force, as yet unknown.”

  “But what is this force?” asked General Vasyutin. “You can’t simply call it ‘unknown.’”

  “As to that, there are three hypotheses. I will argue in a moment, Comrade General, that our response must be the same no matter what the nature of our enemy, but to reply to your question: First, an international organization, using new weapons, which has infiltrated the armed forces of every nation and even government officials at high levels. Second, after all, that it is merely a series of coincidental events. Third, that these deaths are caused by the so-called McNulty’s Virus acting in a coordinated way to achieve its ends.”

  “I don’t believe in invisible intelligences.”

  “Nor do I, Comrade General, but as Marxists and scientists we must adhere to the principle of least hypothesis. All three of these possibilities are incredible, but the third is a little less incredible than the others.”

  “Let us see if we can test this hypothesis,” said General Durnovo. “If the virus is responsible, why did it begin to act five years after it first appeared?”

  “That is accounted for in principle by the progress of the epidemic. According to World Health Organization estimates, there are now approximately two hundred million individual viruses in the world. It may be that this represents a critical value. There are enough viruses, distributed through the world population, to enforce their will wherever they wish. This accords with the fact that in the last six months no command to inflict lethal damage on enemy forces has gone unpunished. Earlier episodes may be accounted for by unusually large local concentrations of virus.”

  “Counterrevolutionaries,” muttered General Usakov, a grizzled veteran of the Afghan War.

  “With all respect, Comrade General, counterrevolutionaries that act impartially against socialists and imperialists alike? But I say again that in the last analysis it does not matter who or what this force is. We have only two options, to neutralize the third force or to adapt ourselves to it successfully.”

  “Assuming that you are right,” said Vasyutin, “which option do you recommend?”

  “Both. The Americans and British have developed methods of detecting and destroying the viruses. We have obtained samples of these devices, and Russian scientists are working to improve them. There is a chance that because of our superior organization we will be able to use such devices more effectively than the capitalists, but at the same time we are hampered in a fundamental sense by the vast extent of our territory. Therefore in the short term I believe we must revise our methods in such a way that we can achieve our objectives without violence. Fortunately, there are clear indications that this can be done.”

  Adjarian pressed a button. “Here is a possible model of the new Russian infantryman.” In the holotube a man appeared, wearing a lightweight uniform and a helmet with a transparent visor. In his right hand he carried a long pole with a metal apparatus at the end; in his left, a net.

  “A retiarius,” said Kondakov. “There is his net, and that other thing looks like a trident. Are you really proposing that we go back to Roman times?”

  “Quite right. The weapon which you compare to a trident is the device developed by the Americans to subdue and isolate carriers of the virus.” He pressed the button again. On the screen another man appeared, dressed as a civilian. The soldier stepped forward, leveled his weapon and thrust it at the other man’s waist. The device at the end of the pole locked around the captive. The soldier dragged him away.

  “That’s all very well for an unarmed man,” said Vasyutin, “but what does it have to do with combat?”

  “If the other man were conventionally armed,” replied Adjarian, “his weapons would be useless. Under the assumptions we are discussing, if he even formed the intention of killing our infantryman, let’s say with a rifle or a grenade, he would fall dead.”

  “And if he had the same weapons as our man?”

  “For that, we have a computer simulation that is quite interesting.”

  In the holotube, a rolling landscape appeared. Two armed bodies of men were approaching each other through the scattered trees, some in personnel carriers, others on foot. One group was in blue uniforms, the other in brown. The footsoldiers were variously armed, some with shields and long poles with padded tips, others with “tridents” and nets.

  As the two groups closed, mortars on either side began firing. The projectiles were large white objects; when they struck the enemy, the latter were knocked down, and the projectiles burst, releasing clouds of white powder.

  “Pillow fights?” said General Usakov incredulously. “I’ve seen enough.”

  “I hope you’ll stay until the demonstration is over. I understand your feeling, Comrade General, but kindly reserve judgment. By the way,” Adjarian added, “those white clouds y
ou see do not represent chemical agents, but simply chalk dust, intended to confuse the enemy and reduce his range of vision.”

  Now water cannons were bowling over men on either side. A hail of rubber bullets spun them around. Then the two sides had closed. The shieldmen thrust at the opponents with their padded poles; the retiarii thrust with their tridents. Whenever a man fell, a retiarius was there to tangle him in a net or capture him with a trident.

  The watching officers observed that when two shieldmen were engaged, a retiarius could circle around one of them and bring him down; conversely, when two retiarii faced each other, a shieldman with his longer weapon could knock one of the combatants off his feet.

  When the brief engagement was over, the brown army was mopping up. The remaining blue soldiers were surrounded, netted or secured with tridents, and led away to the rear.

  “I see that we shall have to read our Vegetius again,” said Vasyutin.

  “Indeed,” responded Adjarian, “and very carefully. Well, comrades, of course this is only a simulation, but from it we learn that in an encounter between two forces armed with the same weapons, discipline, strength, and numbers will prevail. That is somewhat reassuring. Weapons change, but war is still war.”

  “What if your enemy is not on foot, but in tanks and armored carriers?”

  “I might reply that in that case, we would be in tanks and carriers too, but a better question is, what can men in tanks and carriers accomplish? Tanks can push down obstacles and destroy buildings, true, but in doing so they will kill people, and the soldiers in them will die. In any event, at some point in any engagement, the soldiers must get out of their vehicles in order to achieve their objective of subduing the enemy, and then the situation is as before.”

  “What about aircraft?” demanded an officer with silver wings on his lapels.

  “To drop chemical agents and smokescreens, certainly. We’ll have to investigate that sort of thing carefully. There may be an advantage in using these methods when a commander is faced by troops better trained or more numerous than his own. But it’s also possible that they would only confuse and delay the issue. Here we can draw on the lessons of the First Imperialist War. At any rate, we’ll certainly need light, low-flying aircraft for reconnaissance and diversion, but—under these assumptions—heavy bombers and fighters are a thing of the past.”