“Math isn’t like physics.” Mike sensed a note of scorn in Ed’s voice. Ed seemed to feel that the pure truths of mathematics were superior to more practical, and ambiguous, knowledge. “And a computer could have written that letter.”
“Assume it did. Gordon still had to go through finding out all those details on your work, he or somebody had to go do the programming. And I doubt that a computer would have put in all those personal touches.”
“I didn’t know you were in the habit of reading my mail.” Ed’s tone of voice was still the same, but his face tensed slightly, Mike realized that his brother was very annoyed.
“I’m in the habit of reading anything that’s lying around on the kitchen table when I’m drinking my morning coffee. You should have put it inside your desk.”
Ed shrugged and left the room. Mike heard his footsteps and then the closing of Ed’s bedroom door. Ed was going to spend another solitary evening with his books or violin, as he almost always did. He was unhappy with his life, Mike could sense that, yet he did little to change it.
Ed was overly sensitive, just like the others, although at least he did not overwhelm Mike in emotional turmoil the way the other clones often had. He could at least talk to Ed and be more open with him than with outsiders. His brother’s presence was often comforting. Kira and Jim, with what Mike considered to be a rash and emotional act, had simply made life at their old home unbearable to him. Mike had seized the opportunity to escape. And Ed certainly had not gained anything by those sexual transactions; he too had willingly left. And Al was puttering around on the moon, confusing his work with Paul’s, wanting to be near their father’s grave while trying to surpass him. When he bothered to think about it at all, Mike wondered how he could be so closely related to people who were so often capable of monumentally foolish acts.
He glanced at his watch. He had already spent too much time on these ruminations. He began again to read the papers on his desk.
Esther Pressman lived in the same arcology as Mike, in a small house near the top level. She shared her home with two other young women. Mike often stopped by after work to discuss things with her. Esther was gifted with a practical turn of mind and an analytical intelligence. She rarely wasted time in excessive chatter.
Sometimes he had dinner with Esther, who was fond of serving plain, simple dishes without undue ceremony. She, like him, did not care to clutter up her digestive system with difficult-to-digest foods that inhibited clear thinking. Once in a while they would treat themselves to something more elaborate at a nearby restaurant.
He had stayed overnight with Esther a few times. These occasions were the only ones in which she had abandoned her normal reserve. Mike had been fearful the first time, afraid that Esther might drag him into an emotional morass. It had happened to him before with one of his fellow students at school. But he had underestimated Esther. She gave no sign of caring for him as anything other than a friend.
Mike stepped off the elevator and walked along the roadway leading to Esther’s house. Most of the people on this arcology level lived in square stucco bungalows. Several had managed to grow flowers in front of their homes.
If he walked to the end of the road, some one hundred feet from Esther’s house, he could see much of Los Angeles, ribbons of automated highways and trains, a few silvery towers, thousands of tiny houses with tiny blue puddles surrounded by green shrubs, and three arcology latticeworks. The arcology he lived in had been built after the rubble left behind by a severe earthquake had been cleared away. It could supposedly withstand strong quakes; its structure was designed for it. But Mike knew that many of its residents had not taken the extra trouble to anchor their houses or apartment buildings firmly. He envisioned them sliding off the open arcology shelves, tumbling through the barriers around the edges, smashing against the highways below.
Esther was standing in the doorway of her house, dressed in a loose, worn pair of green shorts and a black shirt. She twirled an ice-filled glass in her left hand. As he approached, she lifted the glass in greeting.
“Just getting some air,” she said with artificial brightness. As he passed her, she touched his arm lightly and whispered,” Joe Lahani’s inside. Good news.”
Mike walked into the living room. Three dancers swirled around him, trailing ribbons of brightly colored cloth. He walked through one of the twirling figures. The three dancers disappeared as Joe Lahani turned off the holovision.
“Hey, Mike,” Joe rumbled in his low voice, “I tried to call you after work and your brother said you’d be over here. So I thought I’d come over and tell you.”
Joe sat on the couch with Polly Anton, one of Esther’s roommates. Polly was a tall, slow-moving young woman who worked on satellite repair and was rarely home. She was probably on a month’s leave.
“Tell me what,” Mike said.
“I’ll go and change, Joe,” Polly said. She got up slowly, stretching and running her hands through her short red hair. “Joe’s going to take me down to the gym for some handball,” she said to Mike. “God, I get so out of shape up there, it’s so hard to force yourself to work out.” She patted the large hips under her brown dress. “I always feel so tired when I first get back.” She looked past Mike at Esther, who had re-entered the room. “You should have brought Joe around before, Esther. We both like handball and swimming and sailing. He’s a nice guy.” Esther shrugged.
“You’re a nice guy,” Polly said to Joe. She blew him a kiss and then padded out of the room on bare feet.
“Polly tends to be effusive,” Esther said. She settled into an egg-shaped red chair, tucking her feet under her. Mike seated himself on the couch with Joe.
“The news,” Mike said.
Joe waved his bottle of beer. “Morel was talking to me today, he was fishing around, you know, trying to find out something and not saying what it was. So I finally said to him, okay, brother, what do you want to know, and he sort of…”
“Joe, please get to the point,” Esther said.
“He and the company need someone to go to Bihar in India, set up a power station near Patna. They want to do what we knew they’d have to do sooner or later, put the power station in space and beam the power to Patna using microwaves.”
At last, Mike thought. There were few stations generating fusion power on the earth’s surface, but the demand for them was increasing, in spite of the other sources of power that existed. Energy was needed for industry, for recycling, for lighting, heating, or cooling homes. No matter how much geothermal plants, windmills, the use of solar power and the utilization of hydrogen produced, the need for energy kept growing. Fusion, unlike the other sources of power, produced energy that had previously not existed on the earth in any form; Mike knew that the heat generated by too many fusion stations on the earth’s surface could alter its climate. He was relieved to hear that his company was not waiting until it was too late before considering this problem.
“Anyway,” Joe went on, “Morel said he had his eye on me and Janey Elton, Janey for the supervisory and business side of things and me for setting up a research team, filling them in on possible projects, especially after the thing’s
done. We sorta go as consultants, you know, iron out problems and get the thing finished. The Indians there are trained, of course, we’re just going to help with details, for about a year or two. Actually…”
“Joe,” Esther said.
“Well, Morel talked to Janey and she agreed with him that you were just the man to go, brother. Naturally I said you were too. Think of it, we get more pay, a promotion and a chance to do something besides sit on our asses in L.A. trying to find refinements and applications for power stations that the engineers could run by themselves.”
Esther grimaced.
“Hell, the computers could run them,” Joe continued, looking at Esther. “They just keep you people around so they can have someone official-looking in a white coat to take the public through the lab or over to the station on tour
s.”
Esther chuckled. “They just keep you around because one out of a million of your bright ideas might be worth being put into practice by us engineers.”
“I hate to admit it, but they’re even sending a couple of your people with us. Of course, they’ll be out in space half the time, puttering around.”
Mike looked down at his feet. “I didn’t know they were thinking of sending me,” he muttered.
“Why shouldn’t they, brother? You’re one of the best.”
Mike suddenly felt uncertain. The feeling was distasteful to him, breaking in on his stability. He was annoyed with himself.
“You don’t look so happy,” the big man said. “I tell you we’re going to India, getting a real chance to help somebody and do ourselves good besides, and you look like they assigned you to recycling.”
“I don’t know,” Mike said. “I don’t know if I can go to India.”
Esther was watching him. He could imagine what she must be thinking.
“You can always say no,” Joe said. “And you won’t get another chance too soon, not unless you’ve got a damn good reason.”
Mike watched his sandaled feet curl on Esther’s grassy rug. What could he say? He would not feel right about leaving Ed alone in Los Angeles. But it’s not just an emotional thing, he thought to himself, Ed needs me here now, it’s an obligation. It would not be right to leave the insecure Ed by himself.
“If you aren’t interested in your own welfare, better think of mine and Janey’s, brother,” Joe said belligerently. “How do you think we’re going to look for recommending you so highly?”
Leave it to Joe to drag in something like that, Mike said to himself. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said aloud. “Morel picked me, he’d have to blame himself and the personnel computer, not you and Janey.” Mike could hear Esther move in her chair. “It’s just that I’ll have to arrange some things, that’s all. I don’t have to decide right away, they’ll give me a couple of weeks.”
“Oh,” Joe mumbled. “Oh,” he said again, as if suddenly discovering something. “You and Esther. I didn’t think. But if you tell Morel, he’ll fix it so you can have a few weekends now and then and you’ll have your vacations together. He’ll understand that.”
Esther sighed.
“Come on, Joe,” Polly’s voice said from the doorway. Joe got up and lumbered across the room.
“You think about it, Mike,” Joe muttered as he left. “Morel’ll probably call on you tomorrow.”
He was alone with Esther. “Why didn’t you tell him?” she said as she rose and went to the small cabinet in the corner to pour herself another drink. She waved the bottle at him and he shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell Joe it has nothing to do with me?”
“Couldn’t it?” he tried to say lightly.
“I don’t fool myself,” she said, settling next to him on the couch. “I like undemanding friendships. I’ll miss you a little, but I can live without you. I don’t like being tied down any more than you do. So what’s the problem?”
“It’s not really any of your business, Esther.”
She smiled, seemingly unannoyed. “You’re right, it isn’t. And I’m not particularly worried about you, you can usually take care of yourself. But I’m afraid if you make the wrong decision now, you might hurt yourself. Oh, you’ll hurt the company a little, but they can get someone else, there are plenty of good people around. But after a while, you might regret your decision and then you won’t function as well. It’ll affect your work.”
“I don’t regret things. It’s a waste of time.”
“You might, and then whatever or whoever held you back will suffer your resentment. No one will gain anything. You have to consider yourself first, or you won’t be much good to anyone else.” She paused. “It’s your brother, isn’t it.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It is. You’re being very foolish. Ed isn’t a child.”
He was suddenly angry with Esther. His anger seemed to grab him by the throat and he was unable to pull away from it. “Shut up,” he said quickly, “it’s none of your business and I don’t need your advice. Just keep out of it!” He was shouting. Startled, he grabbed her arm and realized his own was shaking. He was frightened now, shocked at the forceful demonstration of his feelings. The wave of anger receded, leaving a residue of shame.
“Relax,” she said calmly. He could not read her face. She was a hard, brittle thing, her eyes were dark pools with nothing behind them. He did not want to be with her, or anywhere around her.
He fled from the house, but not before heating her quiet last words.
“Call me if you feel better, and don’t slam the door.”
Mike managed to keep from committing himself when Peter Morel came to his office. But his own voice had sounded hollow in his ears as he reassured the small reticent man that he was delighted at the opportunity to go to Bihar, but needed the weekend to think things over.
“Of course,” Morel said as he opened the office door to leave. “You think it over. Don’t take too long. We want to start you people on hypno-training in Bihari. You’ll still need some time after that with the language computers if you’re to be fluent. You’ll need it even if most of your co-workers do speak English, which I’m sure they do.” Mike realized that Morel already assumed he was going. Why shouldn’t he? Only a fool would turn it down.
“I’ll be seeing you,” Morel said, still lurking by the entrance. Mike nodded his head in dismissal and Morel, twitching nervously, almost lunged through the doorway, slamming the door behind him.
Morel was definitely the wrong person for his job, Mike thought. When he had to give a person word of a promotion, he was as excited as if getting it himself; when he had to let someone go, one could almost feel Morel’s ulcer twitch in sympathy. When faced with uncertainty, the poor man grew nervous with fear. He found Morel irritating, but maybe his empathic traits endeared him to some who received his messages. Still, an average working day must be an emotional morass for a person of his kind.
The thought of Morel disturbed him. He turned his attention to the papers on his desk. He would have to type another research progress report into the computer soon. He sighed softly and made a note to do that tomorrow. There were some technical papers to be read. He wrote down the titles of the ones he would read that night, dialing them at home and billing the company afterward. There was a meeting of physicists in Berkeley tomorrow morning that he had promised to attend; he would tune it in on his holo at home and come to the research center in the afternoon.
He was ready to leave. Ed had an evening class and had taken the car with him, so Mike would have to catch a train.
He walked out of his office and past closed office doors. He nodded to Lonnie Samuelson as he passed him in the hall. Samuelson, a tall, cool, blue-eyed man, approved research projects and checked on their progress. He would read Mike’s progress report and would undoubtedly, as he nearly always did, stop by Mike’s office to discuss the report with him. Mike supposed that Samuelson’s job was necessary, yet he was often annoyed by the man’s constant checking, his visits to the laboratory, and his insistence that each project have a clearly defined goal at its inception. He should realize, Mike thought, that in research you often don’t know what your result will be until you get to it. But then Samuelson and his people were probably not intelligent enough, even though trained scientifically, to do research. Mike sometimes felt sorry for them.
He passed an open laboratory door and heard the voices of children. The company, which ran a child care facility at the research center for the sons and daughters of workers, encouraged the children occasionally to watch their parents at work. It also welcomed young people who might wish to have a scientific career. Mike had, on a few occasions, explained his work to groups of students. He would direct his remarks to those who were obviously interested rather than to those who betrayed their boredom by restlessness.
In his imagination, Mike
could almost hear the hum of the generators in the plant several miles from the research center as they fed the hungry city. It was the generators that were most impressive to the schoolchildren and citizens who sometimes toured that facility. They were often disappointed by the sight of the fusion process itself. It was so apparently simple, the small pellet of fuel in a vacuum chamber, met by a laser beam which compressed the pellet and heated it to over one million degrees. Its energy would be carried from the chamber by a stream of liquid lithium which, by heating water into steam, the large generators that supplied electrical power. The generators got the applause of the crowd, yet to Mike the laser fusion process itself was infinitely more impressive. It could in time, using orbiting power stations, give people as much power as they could use.
Of course, people would still use solar power too, much of it beamed to the earth from orbiting solar panels. They would also make use of geothermal power, of hydrogen, of windmills in some cases. It was good that people had a choice, he thought, different areas had differing needs and differing levels of technical expertise. Yet in time one form of energy production, that which could provide the most energy at the lowest cost, might win out.
Mike hoped he would live to see the day when the world was no longer divided into poor and wealthy, with the wealthy hoarding their riches and defending them with weapons that themselves took much of the wealth. He did not feel altruistic. He simply found it wasteful and unproductive to conceive of a world in which human minds were wasted and the more fortunate had to worry about others. Better to give everyone a chance and then let a person make his own choices and decisions.
He came to the nearest exit and soon found his way to the moving sidewalk that would take him to the train station. He looked back at the research center. It was far from beautiful, a square, four-story block of gray surrounded on three sides by a grassy park area with benches under palm trees. Beneath the park was an underground parking lot. Beyond the park he could see the basin of Los Angeles, covered with the vines of automated highways and municipal train tracks. The fusion process had become available none too soon for this city, providing the power from the automated highways and trains that had kept it from becoming an uninhabitable, smog-filled valley. Los Angeles had, with the aid of new technologies, preserved its freeways and its decentralized life style. Its arcologies, small cities in themselves of half a million people each, provided a less isolated existence for those who preferred to have friends, stores, and businesses within walking distance.
Cloned Lives Page 17
