by Ben Bova
He got up and went into the house, looking for one of the housekeeping staff. Instead he found Kaufman and Sutherland.
“Have you seen Greg Belsen?” Kaufman asked. “They’ve just told us there’s going to be a meeting to explain what this is all about, and we can bring three people. Where is he?”
Lou was about to answer when he remembered that Kaufman’s daughter was on the beach. “Greg’s… uh, he was here a while ago. I don’t know where he is now.”
Sutherland made a sour face. “The car’s right outside, they want us now.”
“I’ll go,” Lou heard himself say.
“You?”
“I’ll sit in for Greg.”
“But…”
“Unless you want to look around for somebody else.”
Kaufman glanced unhappily at Sutherland, who was eyeing Lou’s vivid shirt and shorts. The two older men were also in sports clothes, but their colors were dark and conservative.
“I could change in two minutes,” Lou offered.
“No time to change,” Kaufman said. “The car’s waiting for us. Come on.”
With only a slight grin of satisfaction, Lou went with them to the car. There were two men in the front of the car, both wearing brown uniforms without markings of any kind. They both looked dark, swarthy. And they said nothing.
In the back seat, Sutherland frowned as the car pulled away from the villa. “What do you think this is all about?”
Dr. Kaufman shook his head. “Whatever it is, it will probably be more fantastic than any of the rumors that have been going around.”
They drove for nearly an hour down a winding dusty road. Most of the time the road threaded between hills, and there was little to see except the greenery whizzing by. But once in a while they would top a rise and view the sun-dazzled sea stretching off on one side of them, and rich fields of olives and citrus groves on the other side.
Thick clouds began to pile up as they drove on, and by the time they passed the gate of another old villa with its uniformed guards standing at attention, the clouds towered darkly overhead, grumbling and flickering with lightning. It seemed almost as dark as evening, although it was still early afternoon.
There were dozens of cars parked in front of the villa’s main entrance. And inside, the old house was filled with men and women, milling around aimlessly, buzzing with conversation.
Lou, Kaufman, and Sutherland stood just inside the front door, gaping at the unexpected crowd.
“That’s Margolin, from the Paris Academy,” Dr. Kaufman said. “What’s he doing here?”
“And Liu from Tokyo,” Sutherland added.
“Look … Rosenzweig… and there’s Yossarian!”
“My God, all the top people in the field are here.”
Lou recognized some of them, the best-known geneticists and biochemists in the world. He saw no other computer engineers, though.
“Adrian!” called a frail, little man with wispy white hair. “I knew they would bring you here, too.”
Kaufman turned and recognized the old man. Both shocked and delighted, he went to him, hands outstretched.
Max… they brought you in on this.”
Then Lou realized who he was: Professor DeVreis, the elder statesmen of the world’s geneticists, the man who had taught the leaders of the field, like Kaufman, in their university days.
Dr. Sutherland joined them, and soon the three of them formed the nucleus of a growing, grave-faced, head-shaking crowd. Lou stood by the entrance, alone now.
“Do you know any of these people?”
Lou looked up to see a tall, gangly, lantern-jawed fellow his own age standing beside him. He was wearing a baggy suit with full trousers and the kind of shoes that you only found in northern hemisphere cities. At second glance, Lou could see that he was trying hard to look calm and unfrightened.
“I don’t know many of them personally,” Lou answered. Then he pointed out several of the scientists.
His new companion shook his head worriedly. “Geneticists? Biochemists? Why am I here? I’m a nuclear physicist!”
He spoke with a trace of an accent that Lou couldn’t pin down.
, Now Lou felt equally puzzled. “If it’s any consolation, I’m a computer engineer. Um… my name’s Lou Christopher.”
With a toothy grin, he took Lou’s offered hand. “I am Anton Kori. I’m from the University of Prague.”
“And I’m with the Watson Institute of Genetics… or was, that is.”
“American?”
Lou nodded. Then he saw that many of the people in the crowd had drinks and sandwiches in their hands. “Looks like lunch is being served someplace around here. Hungry?”
Kori shrugged. “Now that you mention it…”
They exchanged stories as they searched through the crowded rooms and finally found the luncheon buffet table.
“Nothing like this has happened in Czechoslovakia in thirty years,” Kori said, reaching for a sandwich. “Arrested in the middle of the night and carried off by the police… it’s like stories my grandfather used to tell us.”
Suddenly, his face brightened. “Ah! There are two men I know!”
Lou followed him as he rushed over to a pair of older men standing by the French doors, eating and talking quietly. One of the men was chunky, bald, very fair-skinned, dressed in shorts and pullover. The other looked Indian: dark, slim, and intense, slightly Oriental-looking. The plain-gray business suit he wore simply accentuated his exotic looks.
“Clark! Janda!” Kori called out as he rushed up to them.
“Anton,” said the chunky man. “What on earth are you doing here. Or for that matter, what are any of us doing here? Do you know?” His accent was unmistakably English.
Kori introduced Lou to Clark Frederick and Ramash Jandawarlu, rocket engineers.
“Rocket engineers?” Lou echoed.
They nodded.
“We were working together—by fax and phone, mostly,” said Frederick, “on an improved fusion rocket.”
“For interstellar ships,” Kori said.
“Interstellar… oh, like the probes that were sent out around the turn of the century?” In the back of his mind he was trying to remember whether it was Clark Frederick or Frederick Clark.
“Yes, like the probes, only much better,” said Jandawarlu in his reedy voice. “Rocket engines that could propel manned vessels, not merely small instrument probes.”
“Manned ships, to the stars?”
“Yes. It would have been something magnificent.”
Clark huffed at his co-worker, “You speak as if it’s all over for us.”
The Indian spread his hands. “We are here. We are not working. I don’t think they will allow us to work.”
“But who are they?” Kori demanded.
Lou said, “The world government. For some reason they’ve rounded up the world’s top geneticists and biochemists… and apparently a few rocket people, too,”
“But why?”
As if in answer, a voice came from a hidden loud speaker:
“Ladies and gentlemen, if you will kindly assemble in the main salon, we can begin the meeting.”
For a second or two the big room was completely silent, everyone stood frozen. There were no sounds from anywhere in the house, no sounds at all except the low grumble of far-off thunder. Then, everybody started talking and moving at once. The hubbub was terrific as more than a hundred men and women poured back into the hall and headed for the villa’s largest room.
It wasn’t difficult to find the main salon. It was at the end of the front hall, a huge room hung with blue and gold draperies. There were three ornate chandeliers and a half-dozen floor-to-ceiling mirrors set into the walls. The floor was polished wood, for dancing. But there were rows of folding chairs arranged across it now. The far end of the room was bare except for a blank viewscreen on the wall, big enough for a public theater.
Once everyone was inside the room, the doors swung shut and clicked
softly. Nobody in sight, but they’re watching us just the same, Lou thought. And a shiver went through him.
Lou sat with Kori, Frederick, and Janda in one of the rear rows of folding chairs. He saw Kaufman and Sutherland up in the front row, next to Professor DeVreis.
The big viewscreen began to brighten and glow softly. A voice said:
“Gentlemen, you will be addressed by the Honorable Vassily Kobryn, Minister of Security.”
The image of Kobryn’s heavy, serious face took shape on the screen.
“Russian,” muttered Kori.
“Gentlemen,” Kobryn said slowly, “it is my unhappy duty to explain to you why you have been taken away from your work and your homes to this place. Believe me, the Council of Ministers has thought long and hard before going ahead with this drastic action.”
It’s going to be bad, Lou realized. He’s preparing us for something even worse than what’s happened so far.
“As you know,” Kobryn continued, his face utterly grave, “the government has worked for more than thirty years to make this planet a peaceful, habitable environment. Our efforts have been made extremely difficult by two factors: nationalism and population growth. We believe that we have been successful on both fronts. There are no more national armies and no possibility of a major war between nations. And world population growth has leveled off in the past ten years. Admittedly, twenty-some billions is a much higher figure than anyone would call optimum, but we are managing to provide a livable environment for this population.”
“What about the cities?” someone called out.
“Quiet!”
“Let him get to the point.”
Kobryn seemed almost glad of the interruption. He answered, “Yes, the cities. I admit that most of the larger cities of the world are completely savage… unlivable, by civilized standards. In plain terms, we lost the fight in the giant cities; actually, we started too late. But we have not given up. A considerable portion of our work is being devoted to long-range programs to gradually win the cities back to civilization.”
“Why are we here?” a strong voice demanded.
Nodding, Kobryn said, “I am coming to that. You see, we live in a world that is dangerously crowded. There are many who feel that we have passed the point of no return, that our population is too large. They feel that the barbarians of the cities will engulf us all, sooner or later. Even the optimists among us agree that our present population is too large, and we are constantly on the verge of a disaster. If the crops fail anywhere in the world, if a major earthquake or storm escapes our control… the repercussions could be tragic for the whole world.
“We have eliminated wars and prevented large-scale starvation. But just barely. We can handle twenty billions of population— but only if we keep the worldwide society absolutely stable.”
Kobryn’s voice took on a ring of steel at those words. “We must have stability. At any price. All our computer predictions and all our best social planners come to the same conclusion: unless we have stability, this crowded world of ours will crumble into chaos—starvation, disease, war, barbarism. Without stability, we will destroy ourselves and poison this planet completely.”
There was a long, silent moment while Kobryn stared at them from the viewscreen, letting his words sink in. No one in the audience spoke. The quiet was broken only by somebody’s cough and the nervous shuffling of feet.
“The price we must pay for stability is progress. You and your work are part of that price.”
Now everyone stirred. A sort of collective sigh went through the big room, almost a gasp but not strong enough. More worried and afraid than shocked or angry.
Kobryn went on, “Most of you are geneticists and biochemists. You have proven in recent experiments that you can alter the genetic material in a fertilized ovum, so that you can control the physical and mental characteristics of the baby that is ultimately born. Professor DeVreis, you yourself told me that within a few years, you could produce a superman—”
“Yes,” DeVreis agreed in his rickety, aged voice. “A superman… or a zombie, a slave with bulging muscles and just enough intelligence to follow orders.”
“Just so,” Kobryn said, his face expressionless. “In either case, the result would be a complete shattering of society’s stability. We cannot allow this to happen.”
“Can’t allow…”
“What does he mean?”
“You can’t stop science!”
“Gentlemen, please!” Kobryn raised his voice. “Think a moment! No matter how attractive the picture you have of raising a race of supermen, you must realize that it will never come to pass. Who will be the first superman? How will you select? Don’t you understand that twenty billions of people will bury you in their stampede to have their children made into godlings? Or worse still, they might slaughter the first few supermen you produce in an insane fit of fear and jealousy.”
“No, it wouldn’t happen that way—”
“We wouldn’t let…”
“No matter how you look at it, any large-scale tampering with mankind’s genetic heritage will destroy society as we know it. Believe me! We have spent a year and more examining this question. The best computers and social engineers in the world have labored on the problem. Our world needs stability. Genetic engineering is a de-stabilizing element, a wild card that will destroy society. The government cannot permit this.”
“But it will create a better society! A world of supermen!”
Kobryn shook his head. “No! It will create chaos. Look at what happened in the last century, when vast groups of peoples suddenly became aware that they could be free of the social systems that had enslaved them. When the last vestiges of the European empires were removed from Asia and Africa, when the American Negro and the world’s youth realized that they had political power, what happened? Was there a peaceful march toward a happy society? No, nothing of the sort. There were wars and revolutions, riots and assassinations—it took nearly the entire twentieth century before an equilibrium was reached. And for most of that time the world population was below five billions!
“Now, we have in our grasp this possibility of genetic engineering, the possibility of making our children into godlings—or slaves. Do you think the people of the world will stand patiently in line, waiting for you to work your miracle on them? Don’t you understand that many would-be tyrants would use your knowledge to produce the zombies Professor DeVreis spoke of? In a world of twenty billions, we would never recover from such a violent upset to the social order. There would be no new equilibrium, only chaos. Our world would come crashing down in anarchy and noting. Your laboratories would be destroyed, and you yourselves would be torn to pieces by the mobs.”
There were a few halfhearted protests from the audience.
Finally Kobryn said grimly, “The government has decided that all research in genetic engineering must be stopped. Therefore, we have brought the leaders in this work to this meeting. You and your colleagues—some two thousand scientists, in all—are to be exiled.”
“Exiled!”
“What?”
“But you can’t…”
“Permanently exiled, together with your immediate families, aboard an orbital satellite that has been set aside especially for you.”
Kaufman was on his feet “You can’t do that! We’re citizens and we have constitutional rights!”
“The world constitution specifically gives the Legislative Assembly the power to suspend constitutional guarantees in cases of extreme emergency,” Kobryn replied “Last week, the Assembly voted and approved your exile. The World Court has reviewed the situation and found that we are acting in a perfectly legal manner.”
Kaufman stood there for a moment, hand up as if there was another point he wanted to make. Then slowly, like an inflated doll collapsing from a leak, he crumpled back onto his chair.
“No one regrets this drastic action more that the Council of Ministers,” Kobryn said to the silent audience. “Y
ou men and women represent the world’s best scientists. But for the safety and stability of the world’s billions, a few thousand must be sacrificed. Your living conditions aboard the satellite, though rather crowded, will be as pleasant and even luxurious as they can be made to be. We do not wish to harm you. We have tried to find an alternate solution to the problem. There is none. And it is absolutely imperative that your work in genetic engineering is not allowed to affect mankind. We are trying to avert disaster. I hope you understand.”
“Filthy liar,” Kon muttered.
Frederick stood up and called out, “My name is Clark Frederick. I’m neither a geneticist nor a biochemist, but a rocket engineer. A few of my colleagues are here too. Are we included in this exile? And if so, why?”
Kobryn glanced away, at something or somebody out of camera range. Then he looked down, as if quickly reading something.
“Ah Dr. Frederick, yes. You and several other scientists and engineers who have been working on interstellar rockets are also included—I regret to say. It was decided that your work could also upset the stability of society, and…” Kobryn shrugged, as if to say. You know the rest.
Frederick’s face turned red with anger. “How in blazes can rockets to Alpha Centari or Barnard’s Star upset the social equilibrium on Earth?”
“Let me explain,” said Kobryn “If the masses of people on Earth believed that starships could transport them to new worlds, new planets of other stars, there might be millions who would seek out this new frontier. As you know full well, only a pitiful handful could ever hope to travel in a starship. It’s much too expensive for true colonization.”
“Of course. Everyone knows that,” Frederick replied.
“No, not everyone The great masses of people would expect your starships to transport them to new worlds, where they could begin new lives, free of Earth. And when we would tell them that this is impossible, they would not believe us. The result would be protests, riots, uprisings.” Kobryn shook his head “We cannot permit it. I am truly sorry.”
Frederick sat down.
“Besides,” Kori said to him, “they get to spend the money we were using on themselves.”
