MacRoscope (21 page)

And he guided her down, seeking the particular perfume, the essential music, on through the splendor of meaning/color, to the series of concepts that spoke of the very substance of life.

The patterns of import opened up, similar at first to those of the destroyer, but subtly divergent and far more sophisticated. Instead of reaching into a hammer-force totality, these delved into a specific refinement of knowledge — a subsection of the tremendous display of information available through this single broadcast. Ivo knew the way, and he took her in as though walking hand in hand down the hall of a mighty university, selecting that lone aspect of education that offered immediate physical salvation.

“But the other doors!” she cried, near/distant. “So many marvelous—”

He too regretted that they could not spend an eternity within this macronic citadel of information. This might be merely one of a hundred thousand broadcasts available — the number began to suggest itself as he grasped more nearly the scope of the broadcast range — yet it might have in itself another hundred thousand subchambers of learning. University? It was an intergalactic educational complex of almost incomprehensible vastness. Yet they, in their grossly material imperatives, had to restrict themselves to the tiniest fragment, ignoring all the rest. They were hardly worthy.

The microcosm of biophysical chemistry: and it was as though they stood within a vat of protoplasm, able to experience its qualities while remaining apart from its reality. Vaguely spherical, it pulsed with its multiple internal processes, held together by a sandwichlike plasma membrane. It seemed at first to be a simple bag of proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and metal ions, the whole with a neutral pH. But it was more than that, and more than physical.

“What
is
it?” she asked, bewildered.

“Model of a single cell,” he said. “We have to become acquainted with this basic unit of life, because—”

But she retreated in confusion, unable to follow the technical explanation. He was hardly able to provide it, anyway, ignorant as he knew himself to be in the face of the immense store assembled. “See, there’s the nucleus,” he said instead.

That seemed to satisfy her. She contemplated the semisolid mass of it, this major organelle floating and pulsing in the center of the cell. It was as though it were the brain of the organism, containing as it did the vital chromosomes embedded in a cushiony protective matrix. From the nuclear wall depended the endoplasmic reticulum — a vast complex of membranes extending throughout the cell. This could be likened to the skeleton and nervous system of an animal, providing some support and compartmentation of the whole and transmitting nervous impulses from the nucleus. Tiny ribosomes studding its walls labored to synthesize the proteins essential to the organism’s well-being.

“It’s — alive,” she said, coming at it in simpler terms.

It was alive. It had an apparatus called the Golgi complex that produced specialized secretions needed by the cell and synthesized large carbohydrates. It breathed by means of the mitochondrion organelle. It fought disease by using circulating lysosomes — balls of digestive enzymes that attacked and broke down invaders. Every function necessary for survival was manifested within this living entity.

“This is what we have to preserve,” Ivo explained. “The body as we think of it can disappear, but the functioning cells — of which this is typical — must remain. They must not die; their chromosomes must not be damaged.”

“Yes,” she agreed, understanding the essence if not the detail. “I will remember.”

Carefully, then, they withdrew from the model. Back they went, up out of the broadcast, the university, holding these concepts like a double handful of champagne, inhaling them, recalling them, back to mundane existence.

They removed the receptors and looked about. Afra and Groton were standing there anxiously.

“There’s so much to know!” Beatryx informed them happily.

The rest was comparatively routine. He took Groton, then Afra, and finally even Brad. Mind was not actually necessary for this familiarization, and could even be a liability because of the lurking menace of the destroyer. Brad, at least, had no more to fear from that.

“It is a kind of mutual contract,” Ivo explained at some point. “It isn’t just a matter of you seeing it;
it
has to see
you
. Not the cell-model; that’s only a visual aid. The
program
. So it is able to key in on your cells, your body and your mind for the — transformation, once you understand and agree. You have to agree; you have to want it, or at least be acquiescent. So it can set up an individual program. This is like a delicate surgical operation, and it is the surgeon.” It occurred to him that he was using a lot of simile in his discussion of the macroscosm — but there were no direct terms for it. As the universe was greater than the solar system, so the universal knowledge was greater than man’s terminology.

“Three million years old,” Afra said. “I can imagine a human doctor, or an alien one, or even a robot. But a beam of pseudo-light…!”

“Do any of you think you can maneuver around the destroyer now? This familiarization has to be done within a few hours of the process, each time.”

“No,” Afra returned bluntly. “I am afraid of that thing. It — had me when it — got Brad. I can’t fight it because it appeals to my intelligence. With you, just now, I closed my eyes, figuratively, until we reached the — cell. I refused to comprehend, and I don’t know the route.”

Which was, evidently, the way it had to be, for her. She could comprehend the destroyer, so was vulnerable to it.

“I felt the danger,” Groton said, “but I didn’t grasp it fully. It was like standing at the brink of a waterfall a thousand feet high, feeling the spume and hearing the thunder and smelling the smashing water, but not touching the falls itself. I suppose I am safely below the limit. I believe I could find the way around it, now that you have shown me — if I had to. I would much rather not
have
to, though.”

So Groton too had to resort to simile.

“It was beautiful,” Beatryx said. “Like poetry and music — but I could never go there by myself. All those rainbow threads—”

And Beatryx.

“One is enough.” Afra asserted herself again. “Next problem: do we trust the procedure? How can we be sure it won’t dissolve us and leave us puddled forever? I appreciate the experience and the review of cellular structure, but I’d like to see a complete cycle before I entrust my tender flesh to it.”

“It
could
be a more subtle version of the destroyer,” Groton said. “Second-line defense.”

“I don’t believe it. This predates the destroyer. All those programs do, but this is so far ahead that — well,
three million years
. And everything I’ve seen has been positive, not negative.” Ivo had a sudden thought. “I wonder whether the destroyer-species is trying to make its mark by undoing the work of all the others? It can’t compete positively, so it—”

“Dog in the manger?” Afra said. “Maybe. Maybe not. Evil I could easily believe, but that would simply be nasty.”

Groton was using the optical system again. “I have a metallic reflection. That UN ship is right on course. We’d better act soon or resign ourselves to capture. How long does a melting cycle take?”

“Not long for the breakdown, as I understand it,” Ivo said. “But the reconstitution — several hours, at least, and it can’t start for at least a day, for some reason. So it could be a couple of days for the complete cycle.”

“There goes our margin,” Afra said. “If we test it and it works, it will be too late for anyone else to use it. If we
don’t
test, we may be committing a particularly grisly form of suicide.”

“We could start someone on the cycle,” Groton said. “If it means death, that should be apparent very soon. The smell—”

“All
right
!” Afra.

“But if everything appears to be in order—”

“All right. A test-cycle, halfway.
Who
?”

“I said I was willing to—” Ivo began.

“Better you go last,” she said. “It’s your show. If it bombs out, you should take the consequences.”

“Afra, that isn’t very kind,” Beatryx objected. The negative comment was obviously an effort for her. “We’re not in a kind situation, dearie.”

Groton left the telescope assembly and faced Afra. “I’m glad you see it that way. We do have the obvious choice for the testing cycle.”

She understood him immediately. “No! Not Brad!”

“If the process works, he must undertake it sooner or later unless we leave him behind. If it doesn’t, what kind of a life does he have to lose? It is not, as you pointed out, a kind situation.”

Afra looked at Brad. He was sitting up with his hair boyishly tousled, a day’s shadow on his face, and saliva dribbling down his chin. His trousers were dark where he had wet them again. He was watching something, half-smiling, but his eyes did not move about.

“Let me handle it,” Afra said soberly. “No one else. I’ll — tell you how it comes out.”

Ivo explained in detail what would be necessary. Groton retired to the underbody of Joseph for some work with the power saw, and brought forth the required basin. They set everything up and left her with Brad. The three of them retreated again into Joseph. No one spoke.

There was a short silence. Then Afra screamed — but as Groton went to look, she cried out to be left alone, and he yielded. Faintly they could hear her sobbing, but nothing else.

No one dared conjecture. Ivo pictured Brad slumping down into an amorphous puddle, first the feet, then the legs, then the torso and finally the handsome head. Had she screamed when the face submerged? Tense and silent, they waited.

Half an hour later she summoned them. She was pale and her eyes were open too wide, but her voice was desperately calm. “It works,” she said.

Brad’s clothing was folded neatly on his former chair. Near it was a covered coffinlike container. There was no other sign of what had passed.

But Afra was very uneasy. “Let’s assume it works — the complete cycle. That we come through it and emerge exactly as we are now, to all appearances. I still can’t accept it intellectually — no, I mean
emotionally
. How do we
know
we have survived it? That the same person comes out of it that goes in?”

“I’ll know if
I’m
the same,” Ivo said defensively.

“But will you, Ivo? You may look the same, sound the same — but how do we
know
you are the same? Not another person of identical configuration?”

Ivo shrugged. “
I’d
know it. I’d know if anything were different.”

She concentrated on him with that disarming intensity. She was loveliest when expressing emotion. “
Would
you? Or would you only
think
you hadn’t changed? How could you be sure you weren’t an impostor, using Ivo’s body and mind and experience?”

“What else is there? If I have Ivo’s physique and personality, I’m Ivo, aren’t I?”

“No! You could be an identical twin — a congruent copy — a different individual. A different self.”

“What’s different about it?”

“What’s different about
any
two people, or any two apples or pencils or planets? If they coexist, they’re discrete individuals.”

“But I’m not coexisting with anybody else. Any other
me
, I mean. How can I be different?”

“Your soul could be different!”

“Oh-oh,” Groton said.

“How else can you term it?” Afra flared at him.

“I’m not trying to bring religion into it — though that might not be a bad idea — I’m just asking how we can verify the price we pay for this wonder from a foreign galaxy. How can we measure self, when physique and mind are suspect? I don’t want to be replaced by a twin that looks and thinks like me; I don’t care how good the facsimile is, if it isn’t
me
.”

Ivo wondered more urgently just what she had seen happen to Brad. She had been profoundly shaken, and now was clutching at theoretical, philosophical objections.

“It happens I’ve thought along similar lines,” Groton said. “I used to question whether the person who woke up in the morning was the same as the one who had gone to bed at night. Whether the identity changed a little with each change in composition — each new bite of food, each act of elimination. I finally concluded that people
do
change, all the time — and that it doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter!”

“The important thing is that we perform our functions while we exist,” he said. “That we live each day as it comes, and don’t regret it. If a new person lives the next day,
he
is responsible. He is guided by his configurations, and his successors after him, and it is not right or wrong so much as predestined.”

“Astrology again?” she inquired disdainfully.

“One day you may come to have a better opinion of it, Afra,” he said mildly.

She sniffed, astonishing Ivo — he had not thought the mannerism could be executed naturally.

He also wondered whether the fervor of her reactions against Groton’s ideas indicated a lurking suspicion that there might be something to them after all.

“At any rate,” Groton continued, “it seems we must either undertake this process, or submit to the approaching UN party. Perhaps the question is whether we prefer to escape in alternate guise, or to surrender in our own.”

“You,” Afra said, “are a fourteen-carat casuist.”

“What are we going to do?” Ivo asked.

“All right. Since I object the most, I’ll go first. But I want some subjective reassurance. I’ve
seen
it; you haven’t. Once you witness it, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I don’t care
what’s
foreordained; I want to believe I’m me.”

Groton kept a straight face. “No one else can do it for you.”

“Yes they can. I want someone
else
to believe I’m me, too.”

“Does it matter what
we
think?”

“It does.”

“Feedback,” Ivo said.