Seveneves: A Novel (69 page)

That elicited a cackle from Aïda. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I was thinking about the Swarm. Eight hundred people all carefully hand-selected for intelligence and rational thought. In the end, all we could think about was how they tasted.”

“None of
us
ate each other,” Ivy said.

“But you thought about it,” Aïda said with a smile.

Dinah slammed her palm hard on the table. She sat still for a moment with her eyes closed tight, then stood up and walked out of the room.

“I guess she is not disciplined or intelligent enough to control her aggression!” Aïda cracked.

“It is a form of self-discipline,” Tekla said. “So that she would not kill you. You see, Aïda,
thinking
about doing such things and
doing
are different. This is why greater discipline is a requirement.”

“Sweetie, what do you mean when you speak of discipline?” Moira asked. “I’m just trying to cash that word out in terms of genetics. I can find a genetic marker for cystic fibrosis. I’m not sure if the same is true of discipline.”

“Some races are disciplined. Is fact,” Tekla said. “Japanese are more disciplined than . . .
Italians
.”

She gave Aïda a stare that would have frozen most people to their chairs, but Aïda just threw her head back and laughed exultantly. “You are forgetting the Roman legions, but please go on.”

“Men are more disciplined than women. Is just fact. So there must be genes for it.”

This produced yet another silence, eventually broken by Luisa: “I’m seeing a side of you I didn’t know about, Tekla.”

“Call me bad, call me racist if you want. I know what you will say: That it is all training. It is all culture. I disagree. If you do not feel pain, you do not respond to pain. And hormones.”

“What about hormones, lover?” Moira asked. Her affection for Tekla was obvious, and took some of the tension out of the room.

“We all know that when hormones are a certain way, emotions have big impact. Other times, not so much. This is genetic.”

“Or maybe epigenetic. We really don’t know,” Moira said.

“Whatever,” Tekla said. “My point is that for people to live in tin cans for hundreds of years requires order and discipline. Not from above. From within. If there is a way to make this easier with your genetic lab, then we should do it.”

Luisa said, “We never explored Ivy’s point that intelligence was key.”

“Yes,” Ivy said, with a glance at Aïda. “I was interrupted.”

Aïda covered her mouth with her hand and sniggered theatrically.

Ivy went on: “If we are really going to open the door to genetic improvement of our offspring, then it seems obvious to me that we should look to the one quality that trumps all others. And that is clearly intelligence.”

“What do you mean it trumps all others?” Luisa asked.

“With intelligence, you can see the need to show discipline when the situation calls for it. Or to act aggressively. Or not. I would argue that the human mind is mutable enough that it can
become
all of the different types of people that Camila, Aïda, and Tekla have been describing. But that’s all driven by what separates us from the animals. Which is our brains.”

“There are many different types of intelligence,” Luisa said.

Ivy gave a little shake of her head. “I’ve seen all of that stuff about
emotional intelligence and what have you. Okay. Fine. But you know exactly what I’m talking about. And you know it can be propagated genetically. Just look at the academic records, the test scores of the Ashkenazi Jews.”

“Speaking as a Sephardic Jew,” Luisa said, “you can imagine my mixed feelings.”

“We need brains, is the bottom line,” Ivy said. “We’re not hunter-gatherers anymore. We’re all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn’t bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It’s our ability to master complex technological skills. It is our ability to be nerds. We need to breed nerds.” She turned to look Aïda full in the face. “You ask for realism. Your complaint about her”—she nodded at Julia—“and the people around her was that they were holding out panaceas. Not facing facts. Fine. I’m giving you facts. We’re all nerds now. We might as well get good at it.”

Aïda shook her head in derision. “You completely leave out the human component. It’s why you are a bad leader. It’s why you were replaced by Markus, when wiser people than you were in control. And it’s why we are here.”

“Here, safe and sound,” Ivy said, “unlike the people who followed you. All of whom are dead.”

“So they are,” Aïda said, “and I am alive, and I can see how it’s going to be: you are going to keep me locked up in an arklet making genetic freak babies and taking them away from me.” And she broke down weeping.

“She has what I have, except worse,” Julia explained. “She sees many outcomes—most of which, given the circumstances, are dark—then acts upon them.”

“What an unusual degree of introspection from you, Julia,” Moira said.

“You have no concept of my level of introspection,” Julia shot back. “I have been clinically depressed for most of my life. I once
used drugs to fix it. Then I stopped. I stopped because I decided they were making me stupid, and I’d rather be miserable than stupid. I am what I am.”

“Depression is genetically based to some extent. Would you like me to erase it from your children’s genomes?” Moira asked.

“You heard what I said,” Julia answered. “You know, now, the decision I made. Which was to suffer for the greater good. Because society will go astray if there are not those who, like me, imagine many outcomes. Let those scenarios run rampant in their minds. Anticipate the worst that could happen. Take steps to prevent it. If the price of that—the price of having a head full of dark imaginings—is personal suffering, then so be it.”

“But would you wish that on your progeny?”

“Of course not,” Julia said. “If there were a way to have one without the other—the foresight without the misery—I would take it in a heartbeat.”

“We only need a few people of this mentality,” Tekla said. “Too many, and you get the Soviet Union.”

“I am forty-seven,” Julia said. “I have one baby in me, if I’m lucky. The rest of you can punch them out for twenty years. Do the math.”

“It amazes me that we have already gone over to the competitive angle!” Camila wailed. “I am so sorry that I brought this topic up.”

A sharp rapping noise brought the room to attention.

Heads turned toward the Banana’s window. It was not large—about the size of a dinner plate. For three years it had been buried in ice and forgotten about. But now it afforded a clear if somewhat dizzying view of their surroundings.

Outside of it, carabinered to the spinning torus, was Dinah. She had put on a space suit and gone out through an airlock.

Seeing she had their attention, she reached up and slapped a small object onto the glass. It was a lump of clay, some wires, and an electronic gadget. She depressed a button on the gadget and it began to count down from ten minutes.

Aïda screamed with laughter and clapped her hands.

“What on earth is she doing?” Julia asked.

“That’s a demolition charge,” Ivy said. “It’s going to kill us all ten minutes from now if she doesn’t take it off the window.” She turned to survey the room.

“Well, what is her point?” Julia demanded.

“I think my friend is trying to tell us that if we can’t settle this in ten minutes, the human race doesn’t deserve to go on existing,” Ivy said.

They all sat silently for perhaps half a minute before Moira said: “How’s this: every woman decides what is going to be done with her eggs.”

Hearing no objection, she continued: “Oh, let me be clear. If it’s a real disease—something on the books, defined in the medical literature as such—then I will fix it. With no distinctions made between physical and mental disorders. No matter how many of those conditions each of you may be suffering from, I will fix them all before taking any other action. However.” And she smiled, and held up an index finger. “Once all that is done, each of us gets a free one.”

“Free what?” Tekla asked.

“One alteration—one improvement—of your choice, applied to the genome of the fertilized ovum that will grow into your child. And your child
only
. You cannot force it on any of the others. So, Camila, if you think it would improve the human race to get rid of its aggression, why then, I will search through the scientific literature for a way to reach toward your goal genetically. And likewise for the rest of you, and whatever changes you happen to think will improve the human condition. Your child, your choice.”

They all considered it, glancing at one another from time to time, each trying to gauge the others’ reactions.

Ivy glanced at the timer outside. “Are there any questions? We have eight minutes remaining.”

Luisa said, “I don’t think we need eight minutes.”

Ivy looked each of them in the eye, then turned toward the window and gave a thumbs-up.

Dinah’s eyes, seen through the glass of the window and the dome of her space suit’s helmet, pivoted to focus on that. She nodded.

Moira smiled and put her thumb up. This too was noted by Dinah.

Then Tekla. Then Luisa, Camila, Julia.

All eyes were on Aïda. She would not look back at them. She was, at bottom, very shy. “Whatever,” she mumbled.

“She needs to see your vote,” Ivy said.

“Really? You mean that I could single-handedly destroy the entire human race, simply by not putting my thumb up in the next seven minutes?”

Tekla pulled a folding knife from a pocket on her coverall and flicked the blade open. She kept it low, down in her lap, and pretended to clean a fingernail with it. “Either that,” Tekla said, “or population of human race suddenly goes from eight to seven, and we have unanimous decision.”

Smiling, Aïda thrust her hand out, thumb down.

“I pronounce a curse,” she said.

Luisa let out an exasperated sigh.

“This is not a curse that
I
create. It is not a curse on
your
children. No. I have never been as bad as you all think that I am. This is a curse that
you
have created, by doing this thing that you are about to do. And it is a curse upon
my
children. Because I know. I see how it is to be. I am the evil one. The cannibal. The one who would not go along. My children, no matter what decision I make, will forever be different from your children. Because make no mistake. What you have decided to do is to create new races. Seven new races. They will be separate and distinct forever, as much as you, Moira, are from Ivy. They will never merge into a single human race again, because that is not the way of humanity. Thousands of years from now, the descendants of you six will look at my descendants and say, ‘Ah, look,
there is a child of Aïda, the cannibal, the evil one, the cursed one.’ They will cross the street to avoid my children; they will spit on the ground. This is the thing that you have done by making this decision. I will shape my child—my children, for I shall have many—to bear up under this curse. To survive it. And to prevail.”

Aïda swept her gaze around the room, staring with her deep black eyes into the face of each of the other women in turn, then looked into the window and locked eyes with Dinah.

“I pronounce it,” she said, then slowly rotated her hand until her thumb was pointed up.

DINAH PEELED THE DEMOLITION CHARGE AWAY FROM THE WINDOW
. She had no idea what Aïda had just said. Nor did she especially care. It would be the usual histrionic Aïda stuff.

Several minutes remained on the countdown timer. She could have simply turned it off. But she felt like going for a walk. Whatever had just happened in the Banana looked unpleasant. She was tired of being cooped up with these people—even the ones she loved. She felt no great compulsion to rejoin them.

She unclipped the carabiner and let go of the lazily spinning torus. Her momentum carried her toward the wall of the crevasse. Long accustomed to movement in zero gee, she timed a slow somersault and planted her feet on the wall to kill her speed, then turned on the magnets in her boots and began hiking up the crevasse wall. The weak gravity made directions arbitrary. Walking “vertically up” a cliff was little different from walking “horizontally along” the canyon floor.

A tone sounded from the speakers in her helmet, alerting her that a voice connection had been made.

It was Ivy. “Going for a stroll?”

“Yeah.”

“Look, we just realized something.”

“Oh?”

“We all voted—except for you.”

“Mmm, good point.” Dinah glanced down at the countdown timer. The screen was getting more difficult to read, since she was nearing the terminator—the knife-sharp line between sunlight and shadow—and the bright canyon wall above her was reflecting from the screen. Tilting it for a better view, she saw that it was just about to drop through the sixty-second mark. “It’s okay, I still have a minute to make my decision.”

“Well, do you want to know what the rest of us agreed on?”

“I trust you. But sure.”

“We’re all going to try to have babies just like you, Dinah.”

“Very funny.” Dinah crossed over the terminator, and the sun rose. She raised her free hand and flipped down the sun visor on her helmet.

“Moira’s working on it now.”

“Is that why Aïda was being such a drama queen about it?”

“Exactly.”

Thirty-five seconds.

“What did you really decide?”

“One free gene change for each mommy.”

“Oh yeah? So what are you going to do? Make really smart little straight arrow bitches?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Just an intuition.”

“What about you, Dinah?” Dinah could hear the beginnings of anxiety in her friend’s voice. She looked down into the crevasse, saw humanity’s cradle welded helplessly into place, imagined for a moment throwing the demolition charge down on it, like a vindictive goddess hurling a lightning bolt.

She was thinking of Markus. Of the kids she should have had with him. What would they have been like?