by John Brunner
The tape cassette signaled the end of its run; Joe sighed and switched the machine off.
Then he got to his feet and went to the window. Looking out at the clear sky, star-studded, he could hear the plaintive twanging of Mrs. King’s moon guitar, the rush of waves on the beach, a car’s engine accompanied by the whirring of its wheels on the road.
Which star—up there? How many of them light intelligent races?
Which of us is to open the door?
He suddenly felt an aching sense of inadequacy, a sense of having missed out on important things. It seemed a vastly disappointing matter that he could not appreciate and enjoy the oriental modes of Mrs. King’s music, that he could not revel in the lush phrases of Rohini Das’s epic poetry, that he could not re-create in himself the wonder which Lawrence Tshekele had conveyed to him—the wonder of a primitive man from a primitive village at the mastery over matter implicit in a modern city.
How could Gyul Kodran and his Federationers have set such an impossible task? A man could live a thousand years and not be truly a representative of Earth! Because Earth implied so many different things—differences of culture, of belief, of language, of technology even. What could be the common denominator of a European with two millennia of civilization behind him and an African with two generations of civilization behind him?
XI
OVER THE PAST few days some building activity had been in progress uphill from the quarters toward the crown of the island. A plain shed had been set up. Bunks had been moved in. Joe had glanced at it in passing and assumed that extra barrack accommodation for the troops had been required. The building was featureless and uninteresting. He thought no more about it.
The following morning, however, it was toward this building that Schneider led the candidates when he had assembled them in the recreation hall. They talked casually as they accompanied him; from what he had been told, Joe knew that all of them had been subjected to the same kinds of tests as he himself had undergone prior to being brought to the island, and were not apprehensive about anything else that might be tried out on them.
The shed had one door—a thick one—and two small windows in the end walls. Briskly Schneider unlocked the door and held it open, indicating that the others should enter. They did so. After the bright sun outside, the interior was very dark; Joe had to blink and wait for some moments before he made out that there was nothing in the hut at all except six wall-mounted bunks, each with a mattress, a sink and toilet, and a table in the centre which could be reached from the lowest tier of the bunks.
Behind him, Schneider could be heard turning a key in the door.
They waited for him to come forward and indicate what was to be done. When he did, he no longer held the key he had used on the door, and his face was seen to be shiny with perspiration. His voice was thicker than usual when he spoke.
“Please be seated,” he said. “It is not comfortable in here. It is deliberately so. You will further observe that privacy is impossible. That too is deliberate. We will remain here for a week.”
Lawrence Tshekele said, “But …!”
“There are no ‘buts’,” said Schneider inexorably. “Please be seated.”
A little dazed, his companions obeyed. Joe was coming to expect the unexpected where the matter of selection was concerned; he reserved judgment and said nothing. Stepan Prodshenko was not so patient. He said, “But what could be the purpose of this game? Here is nothing—hardly room to move! What shall I do for my daily running if I am not to lose my form?”
“I’m going to explain,” said Schneider with careful mildness. Stepan assumed an aggressive expression, which said better than words that the explanation had better be good; Mrs. King sighed loudly and Rohini Das shrugged as though to say that whatever happened she would let it go by her.
Perched on the edge of one of the bunks, leaning forward on the central table with his elbows, Schneider looked at nothing and began to speak in a barely audible voice.
“It must have occurred to you all—I know it has to some—that the representative from Earth must be a superman. And you have said, “But how can a single individual be representative of Earth?”
“That was what our leaders said, too. And they decided, as we would expect, that no individual can represent the multifaceted nature of humanity. Perhaps the races in the Federation of Worlds are more homogeneous than we are, that they can think in terms of a ‘typical’ human being. We cannot.
“But an answer has been conceived, and an answer that will work. If we have no superman, we must make one.”
“What?” from Lawrence in an incredulous tone.
“Lawrence, you will learn in a moment. You know that I am expert in the physical nature of thought. It was suggested to me that it might now be possible to duplicate and store a conscious personality. I investigated, and found it was possible. I further found that such a personality could be imprinted on the living brain of another individual, so as to be in full communication with its host. Such a transferred personality can, with its host’s permission, temporarily control the bodily organs of its host, and can be permitted to receive all the sense data of its host’s body—can experience sight and sound, hunger and thirst, kinaesthetic and proprioceptic data, equally with the host.”
Mrs. King said unexpectedly, “The capacity of the brain …”
Schneider glanced briefly at her and then resumed his staring into nowhere. “Yes, Mrs. King. The capacity of the brain permits it.”
A sudden invisible wave passed among them. They exchanged looks of alarm and wonder. In his own face, Joe knew, there was suspicion.
“This is the ultimate nakedness,” said Schneider, and his face was very pale, although his voice had become stronger and more level. “I have myself experimented with this technique. I have entered into the mind and body of my wife—whom after thirty years of marriage I thought I knew as well as I knew myself. I did not. I am trying to be honest when I say that it is like living in a world on the edge of nightmare. It is not nightmare; explanations, reassurances, are always available to satisfy the twinges of unreasoning fear that spring up when one looks, not thinking, in a mirror and sees a stranger’s face. One sees his own face, a stranger’s!
“But here is our only hope.”
A chill pervaded the narrow confines of the stark shed. Joe’s mind was filling with fragmentary thoughts: In full communication! To open my memories of Maggie that are so rich because they are private things!
And he could read parallel reactions on the unguarded faces of the others.
Stepan drew a deep breath, and suddenly glared belligerently at the others. He said, “If it is the best that can be done, it must be done! We must do it for all mankind!”
It was pompously said. But a moment’s reflection told Joe that it couldn’t be opposed. Some have greatness thrust upon them …
“What—” began Rohini Das, and had to check herself, swallow, and begin again. “What exactly is going to happen?”
Schneider, folding and unfolding his hands absently, said, “This. Theory suggests that the capacity of the brain might encompass up to twelve discrete personalities, but six—to allow for fifty per cent inefficiency—was the maximum we dared aim for. We have case histories galore of naturally occurring multiple personality, but they have all been pathological; that was why it was necessary to establish that more than one individual could harmoniously inhabit a body. That was why I myself”—he lowered his voice—“had to demonstrate the efficiency of my technique. I have done so, and I am going to ask you to take my word for it.”
“Whose body?” said Stephan Prodshenko in a strangled tone.
Schneider hesitated for a little while. At length he said, “We considered yours, Stepan—and rejected it. You are the fittest and most skillful among us, but there is one skill you have not acquired, through no fault of your own: that’s the skill of adjusting to varying conditions of gravitation. Joe Morea has that skill. It will be Joe’s
body.”
Joe’s mind froze over with the words. He barely heard the next part of Schneider’s explanation—how the bodies of the others would be kept in artificial coma, how they would most likely be literally rejuvenated owing to the superior efficiency of the artificial lungs, kidneys and digestive systems which would keep them alive. He knew vaguely, because his eyes were still open, that Stepan was studying him thoughtfully. But he could not think. Only the echo of Schneider’s words went bouncing back and forth in his brain, growing louder instead of softer as time passed.
What would it be like? Like nothing else in human experience, said Schneider. But the closest parallel which anyone could think of was their present situation—to be shut up in a featureless room, with no privacy and only their own resources to fall back upon.
What was the effect on the host, on the passenger? Tiring, said Schneider—incredibly tiring. Because of the need continually to bear in mind what was happening, to remember that it was not insanity which was bringing one unprecedented information. The host and all the passengers were always in full communication, so that although one retained his own selfawareness one was also aware of what the others were thinking. It was like remembering, except that it was in the present rather than the past. It had to be experienced, because nothing in human knowledge equaled it.
How about physical differences? How about emotional orientation? Disturbing, said Schneider, but amazingly, less so than he had expected. Unless the passenger consciously concentrated on physical differences, that part of his or her mind which accepted the continuous nerve reports from bodily organs adjusted with fantastic rapidity, finding one-to-one correspondence and thereafter ignoring them. As to emotional orientation, he believed that at least over a short period no problems at all would arise. The companionship of sharing a brain and a body offered such rich rewards of emotional intimacy that he believed it would suffice perhaps for years, without the need for external involvements.
“Regard it this way,” he said thoughtfully. “What is the human impulse toward finding love and affection, if it is not a desire for completion of the self? Agreed, many people never achieve such a level of desire; they are interested in titilating or pandering to the self, rather than extending it or completing it.
“But we here are as emotionally mature and as socially adjusted, as any half-dozen people on Earth. I speak without conceit, I think; I have been married thirty years to a woman who has always balanced me, and I her, and hers is the credit. None of us carries a major phobia or neurosis; we have minor ones, but even those are diminishing. None of us is prey to uncontrollable emotional storms. We are fortunate in having found the ability to enrich other people and ourselves with our talents and our accomplishments. It may not seem to be a great achievement to be normal, but I assure you it is—to be normal as well as highly intelligent. Why? Perhaps because the intelligent person is usually frustrated to find so much foolishness in the world.”
“What do you call emotional maturity?” said Lawrence Tshekele in a voice that was uncharacteristically low and tense. “I’m not! I’m not mature, my friend. And I know it!”
Schneider turned his eyes on him. He said gently, “Your saying that proves that you are wrong. Do you understand?”
Stepan Prodshenko moved as though preparing for a heavy job of work—setting back his shoulders, tensing and relaxing his muscles in series. He said aggressively, “What must be done, must be done. I believe this is an extremely clever idea. I do not see how we can hope to succeed otherwise.”
How can he accept it like that? Into Joe’s grey, frozen mind, the question came as the first new stirring of conscious thought. Behind it, he remembered what he had felt last night—that same sense of disappointment at not being able to share in the experience of oriental music or Indian poetry. That disappointment seemed now more meaningful than ever, and a new aspect was added to it. He was conscious of a lack in himself as compared with the Russian, and that lack was absence of the kind of incredible determination the other displayed in everything he did. Where he himself would be satisfied with doing something well enough for present needs, Stepan would not give up until he had done it as well as his resources of mind and body would permit him; even after that, he would still want to do better.
Words began to well up, unbidden, in his mind. He found himself uttering them and the others listening. He listened himself, because he didn’t know what he was going to say until he said it; he only knew that he was saying exactly what he felt, without qualification or restraint.
“I don’t like this idea,” he began, “but I’m going to go ahead with it. I’ll tell you why I don’t like it. It’s because I have private memories which mean a lot to me that will be exposed. There’s a girl who brought something new and precious into my life. Further back, there are things that aren’t pleasant—things I’m ashamed of, things I don’t enjoy remembering. All right. But I’m going to do it anyway, because I know that everything is equal in this. As the doc said, this is the ultimate nakedness. I’m putting my trust in a belief that all of us are just people, and for everything I expose—all the private secrets, whether pleasant or unpleasant—I’m going to find a match in your minds. I’m gambling on what I want to be able to believe with my mind as well as my heart, if you like: that you and I are enough alike in what really matters to stand each other under any and all circumstances.
“And if we can’t stand each other, then Gyul Kodran was right, and we’re certain to ruin ourselves sooner or later.”
He looked around, conscious of a certain air of defiance in his words. The others were reacting slowly, but when they did, they nodded and murmured words of approval.
“Joe,” said Schneider after a while, “you’ve made a confession—a confession of faith. I’m going to make another, and you won’t like it. Maggie happens to be Dr. Margaret Reynolds, one of my collaborators. You didn’t know, but she made your acquaintance on purpose.”
Sudden jealous alarm snatched Joe back from the state of tranquility he had somehow achieved a minute earlier. He said, “You mean it was faked?”
Horror and despair rang in his tone. Schneider winced and bowed his head. He said in a low tone, “No. It wasn’t faked, Joe. If you like, I set Maggie to you, just to report on you. I gave her hypnotic injunctions against getting emotionally involved with you. I don’t know what you did to her, but when she came back, there was an unequaled radiance in her eyes when she spoke of you. There is a small confession of guilt, and I hope also a promise of happiness. It was that glow in her eyes which made me certain about you.”
He looked around. “We are making offerings,” he said, “to each other, and yet not to each other. We are committed to a grand scheme of deceit. We are doing it because we do not feel it fair to humanity to allow it to be judged on a single individual’s thoughts and actions. Nonetheless, it is deceit, and we must redeem ourselves if we can by honorable sacrifice. For the present, it is we who are man; personified in us, man is going to do the best he can.
At first it seemed to Joe that the little room was intolerably narrow and confining; he itched to go out and walk in the sun, he ached to return to the room he had left where he could sleep without hearing five other breathing rhythms in the still night. Yet, as time passed, the confines of his surroundings began to trouble him less and less. Interests sprang up in what Mrs. King had to say about the philosophy of music, in what Lawrence could tell about the conflict between new and old in Africa, in what Stepan said about the concept of victory.
The lack of room to move affected Stepan worst; he was accustomed to exercise, and his restlessness was painful to see. As a substitute, he set himself to work out patterns of gymnastics on the frame that held the bunks, and sometimes an hour went by without him touching the floor as he manhandled himself about the room in ceaseless circling.
For Joe, the lack of privacy in the physical sense was worse than the confinement, simply because he had been accustomed to confinement
in the cramped quarters of the starship project, where cabins were scarcely more than tin cans and were sometimes referred to as vampires’ coffins. But he had always been accustomed to being alone occasionally. Only in the memory of what it had meant to him to give up that privilege in order to share Maggie’s time twenty-four hours a day, sustained him. That was perhaps the next most precious gift she had given him after her rich affection.
He had the impression that Mrs. King’s worst lack in this closed room was visual stimulation; after a while, you had seen everything there was to see, and when he recalled how she had opened his eyes to the almost frightening beauty of the flowers she had found, he suspected that she suffered emotional starvation without it. At any rate, she spent half the day wistfully looking through the windows and talking little, although her composure remained nearly perfect.
What troubled Rohini Das was different again, but harder to define. It was also a question of stimulus, but not so simple as Mrs. King’s. Her mind was lively, but she lacked persistence; in conversation, she evinced interest in almost everything, yet on any subject other than her own two specialties, she had the irritating habit of dashing off down irrelevant side tracks, never quite finishing an argument. There was a pattern to this that implied frustration and inability to accept restrictions even though she had to admit the need for them.
What irked Lawrence Tshekele, it seemed, was simply the absence of change and new challenges in this tight society. To know that eventually a single great challenge would test his talents seemed to be no consolation for him; the situation starved and blunted the keen excited edge of his mind.
Yet none of their mutual irritations struck the fatal spark which could have ended in hate. That this was so was due entirely to Schneider. He himself, displayed no irritation, although he betrayed signs of strain—his voice occasionally sharpened uncontrollably, his hands shook, and more often than the heat would account for, his forehead shone with sweat. But deliberately, whenever the air grew tense, he turned aside the unuttered insult, the outburst of anger. When Stepan’s monotonous circuits of the room without touching the floor got on Lawrence’s nerves, he mildly suggested that Stepan should go the other way; they all laughed and the tension evaporated. When Rohini Das’s unwillingness to finish an argument annoyed Joe, who preferred to straighten out one thing at a time, it was Schneider who deftly distracted them both with a point they had overlooked. When Rohini Das felt that Stepan was watching her too closely as she washed at the single sink and accused him of overly sensual interest, it was Schneider who paid precisely the right compliment about her warm complexion and shapely arms.
