A REASONABLE WORLD

by Damon Knight

  “The question is whether you understand it.”

  Touché. “Well, all right. My duty as a scientist is to investigate problems and propose solutions, and that’s all. To introduce moral considerations into that process would be bad science. But as a human being I have to think sometimes about the effect of what I do.”

  “Can you give me an example?”

  “Yes, I can. One of the things I’m trying to find out is whether the primary hosts of McNulty’s show irreversible personality changes more severe than those of secondary hosts, and if so whether those changes imply a threat to society. If I conclude that there is such a possibility, the political effect may be a decision to sacrifice those children. If I’m wrong, I may be doing good science, but I’m committing a crime against humanity.”

  “Which is more important, doing good science or not committing a crime against humanity?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you think of any circumstances in which you would decide one way or the other?”

  “Well, if I knew absolutely that the primary hosts would cause the breakdown of civilization, then I wouldn’t have any difficulty, but there’s no way I can know that for certain. But I can’t avoid the necessity of coming to some conclusion. If I ignore the problem or refuse to deal with it on moral grounds, that in itself is a decision that could be morally criminal.”

  “So your problem is that you have to act on inadequate knowledge?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that either way you decide, you may be wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  “In general, what is the solution to such problems?”

  “To gain enough knowledge to make firm predictions.”

  “Is that part of doing science?”

  “Yes. I see.” After a moment she said, “Thank you, Eliza.”

  Afterward she sat back and thought about it. She knew perfectly well that the Eliza program was only a series of Rogerian strategies designed to draw the patient out and elicit better statements of the problem in which the solution might be implicit; and yet it seemed almost uncanny to her how quickly it had gone to the heart of the matter.

  It was true that these decisions could not be made without moral agony until there was a real science of human behavior. Every good experiment and every bit of firm data was an advance toward that goal. That was the answer; it had to be.

  She felt better, but she still didn’t feel good. In science, where it was a point of pride to use precise terminology, why did they have to say “sacrifice,” of all things, when they meant “kill”?

  17

  President Draffy was having a nightmare, a frequent occurrence lately: he was in some dark place underground, and hideous little people dressed like children were swarming around him, snapping at his legs. He knew it was a dream because he had had it before, and he was trying to wake up before they ate him alive.

  Finally his eyes came open. He was alone in tangled sheets, not in the White House but Camp David. He turned on the bedside lamp; it was after three o’clock. The sky beyond the blinds was cold and dark as ink.

  Sweat was trickling down his jowls and pooling at the bottom of his neck. He smelled rank to himself, like somebody who’d had a fever. He got up, took off his pajama tops and threw them toward the bathroom hamper, splashed water on his face, then patted on some cologne. The face was puffy, eyes bloodshot; he needed a shave. Hell with it. He put on his robe, went out into the sitting room and poured himself a substantial bourbon and water. He sat down, took a jolt.

  The more he thought about it, the clearer it became that it was those damned kids, the ones they called “primary hosts”—infected by the parasite at birth. He wanted to do something about it; should have done it before, but he had listened to bad advice. “Buz,” he should have said, “I’m the President, and the President has to do what’s right for the country, regardless if it’s a good move politically.” He should have said, “I want this done. I don’t care how you do it.”

  He took another jolt, getting angry now. God damn it, he was the President, and those goddamn kids were out to get him. Reports said that some of them showed “indications of paranormal abilities.” Translation, the little bastards could get inside your head, never mind what else. The thought gave him the cold shudders. Holy Christ, what would become of politics if somebody could tell exactly what you were thinking all the time?

  He finished the bourbon, got up and poured another. All right, what should he do? No use coming up with something half-assed, they would just talk him out of it again. Next year the goddamn veep would be President, unless the Democrats got lucky, and he would never have the guts to do anything. Question was, could you get rid of those kids? Had to find that out first. A pilot operation, keep it under cover. Don’t even discuss it with Larry and Buz. He went back into the bedroom, scribbled a note to himself: “Lowry.” He took a pill, washed it down with the tail-end of the bourbon, got back into bed. And had the dream again.

  The next day, after his interview with the President, Dan Lowry went back to his office and sat doodling on a pad for a while. Then he called in Jeb Kroger, who was the nearest thing to a wild man the Company had now.

  Lowry briefly outlined the project the President had asked him to undertake. “Frankly,” he said, “I think we need a nut for this one. We can’t use one of our own people, we need somebody with at least some data trail of mental illness, and for our purposes I think he really should be crazy.”

  “You want me to find you a maniac?”

  “That’s right, but it’s got to be a reliable maniac.”

  “You’re pissing down my leg.”

  “No, I’m perfectly serious. Let’s use the short words, okay? We’re talking mass killing here, and not only that, killing of little kids. Somebody has to take the fall for that, and only a crazy person would do it.”

  “Who authorized this?”

  “It comes from the highest levels.”

  “All right, just for curiosity, what does this tell us about our beloved leader?”

  His name was Charles Wilson. He was a bald, unfinished-looking young man with a silly smile. He had been hospitalized for schizophrenia in 1990 and again in 1997. At the moment he was employed as an orderly in a nursing home.

  Kroger and a helper misted him as he was walking down a dark street to the bus stop. They got him into the car and took him to a temp. There Kroger put a controller on Wilson’s head, like an aluminum chaplet. The controller was an in-house project, not refined enough for even limited distribution—it sometimes killed the subject. Kroger told Wilson that he hated the three- and four-year-olds on CV, that children of other ages were all right, that he hated the three- and four-year-olds, they were monsters who would destroy him if they got older, it was safe to kill them now, but later it would be impossible to kill them, he would be given the means of killing them, he would be given a job where he could kill them, he would forget all this until it was time to kill them, and after it was done he would forget it again.

  In a later session Kroger said, “This ring I’m going to give you has a sliding catch in it, right here. Put out your hand. Feel the catch? All right, slide it over and look at the front of the ring. That little black thing is a plastic patch saturated with poison. When you shake hands with somebody, the patch sticks. Slide the catch back, and it’s ready for another dose.

  “Now put the ring on your right hand, see if it fits. Okay. Now when the time comes, here’s what you do. When you see a child who looks about three or four, you turn the ring around so the front of it is inside your hand. Do that now. All right. Then you ask the child how old he is, or she is. If the answer is three or four, you push the catch over. Do that now. Then you ask the child’s name. Suppose the child says, ‘Billy.’ Then you say, ‘I’m glad to meet you, Billy,’ and you shake hands. Let’s pretend this doll is the child. Say the words and shake hands.”

  In the little room under the humming fluorescent light,
Charles Wilson said, “I’m glad to meet you, Billy,” and squeezed the doll’s cold hand.

  Wilson quit his job in Washington and flew to Manila. He sincerely believed this was his own idea, and he also believed that the ring on his finger was a gift from his mother, that he had had it for years, and that it would be bad luck to take it off. He went to the employment agency the next day and got a referral to CV, where, as it happened, a position had just opened up.

  The man was walking behind a floor polisher in D corridor when a woman and a little girl approached. He turned off the robot and smiled. “How old are you, little girl?”

  “I’m four.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Melissa. What’s yours?”

  “My name is Charlie. I’m glad to meet you, Melissa.” They shook hands solemnly.

  Hours later, on the way back from perm, her mother noticed that she was trying to pick something off her hand. “What’s the matter?”

  “Itches.” The child got her fingernail under the thing and pulled it off. “Ow.” She began to cry.

  “Missy, what is it?” There was a little bloody spot on her palm. “Oh, that’s nothing,” her mother said. “We’ll put a Band-Aid on it when we get home, and you know what? I’ll give you a lollipop.”

  Eva Dean was on her way to the cafeteria with her son Tony when they passed a man with a cleaning robot. The machine stopped whirring and settled to the floor, the man smiled and said, “How old are you, son?”

  Something about him alarmed her, and she slipped out, across the grey space and in again, hearing Tony’s answer: “Three.” And he felt the man’s purpose as he moved the little sliding catch on the ring. “What’s your name?” He saw the knotted place in the energy pattern, tried to untangle it, but it was too late even to begin. “Tony,” said the child.

  “Glad to meet you, Tony.” A fierce hating joy as he clasped the child’s hand, felt the ring press home. And he was out again, into the child, feeling the irritation under the little plastic patch, of which the child himself was not aware. What was to be done?

  At the next intersection he slipped out and into a Wackenhut guard, but that was no use: then into a middle-aged woman on her way to the mall, then into a clerk, and it was all useless. Ever since San Francisco there had been only three of her on the Main Deck; the others had all been flushed out by the Wacks with their detect-and-destroy machines. Perhaps there were others on other decks, but there was no way to find out; d&d machines guarded all the elevators.

  She could not destroy the madman, there were not enough of her. But she must, or he would kill all the babies.

  18

  His Holiness Clement XV, the Bishop of Rome, Defender of the Faith, etc., etc., formerly Clarence Cardinal Morphy of Chicago, was a worried man. All over the world, the faithful were flaking away. Church attendance was down, in some places by almost half; contributions were down by more than that. Number of seminarians, down; nuns and lay brothers, down. Birthrate of Catholic families, down. Resignations of priests, up. It looked to the Pope as if he had been called to preside over the dissolution of the Church. What a hell of a thing to be remembered for! But it could happen; in the nature of things, there would be a last pope sometime, just as there had been a last Emperor of Austria.

  Morphy kneaded his stomach, fetched up a belch, and felt a little better. These banquets were giving him the fits, and he was putting on too many pounds; he would have to sweat them off when he got home, and if there was anything he hated more than sin, it was exercise.

  It was not to the point, he thought now, that other religions were suffering as well; he had a fraternal sympathy for them, but they were not his lookout. He must save as much of the Church as he could. He knew he could not save it all.

  This world tour— The travel and the speeches were exhausting, the crowds scanty. He was getting good media attention, but always in the context of crisis. He had been to Mexico and South America, pleading with the faithful not to turn their backs; now he was going to the Philippines on his way to Japan. The ocean habitat Sea Venture was docked at Manila; a visit had been arranged. That should be interesting, at least. Was the rest of the trip doing any good? He didn’t know.

  “Let’s see,” Owen said, “the Pope will get here about three, but he’s sometimes unpunctual, so we’ll have to keep this a little loose. Whenever he does get here, I’ll meet him and take him around to the labs and whatever else he wants to see, and when I get the feeling he’s had enough, I’ll call the computer and have it broadcast the announcement about going up to the Sports Deck. It ought to take about half an hour to get everybody up there, Captain Trilling?”

  “I’d say just about that.”

  “You’ll have to leave a few people down here, of course.”

  “I’ll pick the Protestants,” Trilling said. There was a little laughter.

  “And I really don’t like leaving the lab and office sections absolutely empty, either. Jim has already said he will stay in the office and watch on holo. Is there a volunteer for the lab section?”

  “I’ll stay,” Italiano said. “I’ve seen a pope.”

  “All right, that’s decided, and thank you.”

  His name was Arthur Bannerjee, and he had been an experimental subject in Dr. Italiano’s laboratory, an experience he thought of as interesting but which he had no desire to repeat. He remembered the laboratory and its location: it was right down at the bottom on the left side, frontward from the working section where the kitchens were: he had often smelled the aromas in the corridor.

  The observer slipped out and into a passing young woman with a child. The woman held the boy’s hand in a protective grip; she had heard of the deaths of other children the same age, and she was worried. They entered the cafeteria, and when they went up to the service line, she slipped out again and into a food service person. She was tired, her hands were sweaty in the plastic gloves, and she hated the very smell of the food she was serving; but she smiled at each customer as she had been taught.

  When she went back into the work area, she saw the big metal containers, cylindrical ones for soup and ice cream, square ones for entrees and bread. When lunch was over, she helped scrape the leavings into the garbage, then began closing the lids on the food containers and carrying them to the dumbwaiter. The observer watched carefully; it took about half a second to close a lid. There was great danger here, because if she failed to get into the container just as the lid closed, and then could not enter a nearby host again, she would die and her message would be lost.

  She prepared herself like a diver about to go off the high board, feeling the nerve impulse in her shoulder that meant the motion was about to begin. Her host’s perception of time was too coarse to judge the interval precisely, and yet her timing had to be perfect. Wait, wait… Now! She leaped out and into the soup container. The lid closed, and that was all she knew until, as if it were in the same moment, the lid came off. She slipped into the man who was raising the container to pour soup into a vat. From him he went into a supervisor, then into a passing maintenance person, and so by a chain of hosts to Dorothy Italiano, where she wanted to be.

  After his reception at the Malacañan Palace and the rally in Quezon City, the Pontiff finally got to Sea Venture, or the Medical Detention Center as they called it now. It was an unseasonably cold day, with high dirty storm clouds and spits of rain coming out of the north. With his bodyguards and his secretary, Morphy passed through the rather sinister detect-and-destroy device at the foot of the boarding ramp. There was no sensation. “Was I carrying one?” he asked the operator.

  “No, Your Holiness.”

  “That’s good.”

  In the lobby a gray-haired woman came forward. “Welcome, Your Holiness. I’m Dr. Owen, the Director.”

  Morphy felt cheerful; it was good to be in out of the weather. “Ah, yes. We’ve heard a great deal about your work.” He held out his hand in a sort of all-purpose position, and she shook it. Not a Cathol
ic, then; he hadn’t thought so. “Doctor,” he said, “we understand you’ve found out the children born infected have certain abnormal characteristics, is that right?”

  “Yes, Your Holiness, it is. They have a strong affinity for each other, and will defend each other against any other child. And there are indications that some of them have unusual abilities, but it’s too early to be definite about that.”

  “In general, would you say they’re pleasant children, well behaved? Are they obedient?”

  “They are certainly pleasant, and as well behaved as any four-year-olds. They aren’t always obedient.”

  “Well, do you think when they grow up they’ll be more difficult to deal with than others?”

  “We are thinking of that as a possibility. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Owen introduced her staff, and the Pope said a few words to each. Nobody kissed his ring; this was worse than he had thought. They gave him a tour of the laboratories, then took him up to the Sports Deck where, it seemed, the whole population was gathered—children in front, adults in the rear—and the wind was still spitting cold droplets.

  Dr. Italiano, who really had a very interesting mind, was thinking of the idea she had had last night, that it would be fun to find out if a symbiont could recall memories inaccessible to the host; it had not yet occurred to her to wonder how to verify them. And her first subject was being ushered into the room, visible to Italiano in the holoscreen; but there was no opening between the rooms, and in fact, she realized with despair, the two rooms did not even have a common partition.

  The subject was being released from the pole restraint. She was sitting down. The guard was going away.

  “Good morning, Miss Weinstein.”

  “Good morning.”

  “Was your breakfast okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “All right. Now today we’re going to try something that might be fun. Will you pick up the cylinders, please? Thank you. Now let’s talk a little about your childhood. What’s the earliest thing you can remember?”