A REASONABLE WORLD Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1

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  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

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  13

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  Appendix

  A REASONABLE WORLD

  Damon Knight

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  A REASONABLE WORLD

  Copyright © 1991 by Damon Knight

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Passages from Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler on pages 150 and 151 are reprinted by permission of Sterling Lord Literistic. Inc., and are copyright © 1941 by Arthur Koestler.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  49 West 24th Street New York, N.Y. 10010

  Cover art by Martin Andrews

  ISBN: 0-812-50978-1

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-48783

  First edition: February 1991

  First mass market printing: November 1991

  Printed in the United States of America

  In loving memory of

  ERIC FRANK RUSSELL

  a friend I never knew

  The twentieth century was one of great change and turmoil. The First and Second World Wars claimed 87 million lives, both military and civilian; in the Spanish Civil War and in the Second World War, for the first time in the century, civilian populations were strategically targeted. One hundred thirty-five thousand perished in the fire-bombing of Dresden, 110,000 more in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mortalities in the nuclear destruction of Tel Aviv-Jaffa totaled 500,000. Counting lesser conflicts in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, the death toll was 92 million.

  During the same period, the population of the world rose from 1.5 billion to 5 billion. It had been projected to reach 6 billion by the year 2000, but fell short of that mark by reason of the famines, pandemics, and worldwide economic collapse of the late nineties.

  Nevertheless, extensive ecological damage had already been done. Acid rain from industrial and automobile emissions had destroyed many of the forests of Europe and North America. The deliberate deforestation of the Mato Grosso had turned that area into a desert; together with acid rain and other deforestation around the globe, this led to extensive changes in global temperature, weather patterns and the oxygen content of the ocean and atmosphere. Many perished in floods, typhoons and hurricanes, or starved as a consequence of flood and drought in unexpected places.

  In the last year of the century a new challenge confronted the world: McNulty’s Symbiont, named for the physician who discovered it aboard the ocean habitat Sea Venture. It was later determined that MS was a coherent energy system, possibly of extraterrestrial origin, capable of intelligent action and of taking human beings and other animals as hosts. Its influence on human beings was alarming: former hosts exhibited a strong tendency to break their vocational and emotional ties, leading to a crisis for industry and government. As they proliferated through the population, using rats and other small mammals as intermediate hosts, the symbionts began to interdict most acts of violence on the part of human beings.

  By the year 2005 the world was in the grip of sweeping change. For the first time in centuries, there was no war or threat of war anywhere in the world. Other changes, at first imperceptible, were altering human society in unprecedented ways.

  The Twenty-first Century

  by A. R. Howarth and Lynette Ford

  1

  Stanley Bliss, Ex–Chief of Operations of the ocean habitat Sea Venture, had been for some years living the life of a semi-retired hotelier at his inn on the Costa del Sol near Málaga. Royalties from his book about CV, not to mention the holo rights and consulting fees and so on, had made him financially independent even of the inn, which was very profitable and had been for years. Local government, on the whole, was unobtrusive; the separatist problems in the north were agreeably remote.

  Decent food and few worries had combined to increase Bliss’s contentment as well as his girth, and so had the permanent absence of his wife, whom he had divorced in 2000, and his ne’er-do-well son, who had finally gotten some sort of job in The Gambia in 2001 and not been heard of since.

  Into this little paradise a serpent came in the spring of 2005, in the form of a letter handed to him by Señorita Cortázar with his morning tea. It was from somebody named Roland Casewit III, Undersecretary of Peace in the U.S. government; it began with some complimentary phrases, then went on: “The Government of the United States would greatly value your cooperation in establishing an Expert System aboard Sea Venture in order to give the present staff the benefit of your knowledge and expertise. If it is convenient to you, we would like you to visit Sea Venture for this purpose, as the guest of the United States Government, during the last two weeks of June. Please signify your acceptance to this office as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, damn,” said Bliss.

  He couldn’t turn them down, and it wouldn’t be any good putting them off. “Actually, you’d like to see the old girl again, wouldn’t you?” asked his friend Captain Hartman, when Bliss rang him up to complain.

  “Out of curiosity, perhaps. I understand they’ve turned CV into a sort of prison hulk. I’d just as soon not see that, but I can’t get out of it. What are you doing in June?”

  “Nothing in particular. Why, would you like me to come along?”

  Bliss and Hartman arrived blear-eyed in Seattle on June 15; it was eight o’clock in the evening when it ought to have been four in the morning. They were met by a cheerful young man named Corcoran, Dr. Owen’s assistant, who took them in a chauffeured limousine to their hotel and showed them a few of the sights along the way. Hartman had been rather hoping to see the view from the Space Needle, but Corcoran informed him that it had been heavily damaged in a terrorist attack two years ago and had not yet been rebuilt. Feeling disoriented, the two visitors had a drink in the bar and went to bed.

  In the morning after breakfast they were picked up again by Corcoran for the drive out to Sea Venture. CV, large and white as ever but looking a bit the worse for wear, was moored at the U.S. Coast Guard base in Salmon Bay. Some refitting was being done, Corcoran told them, and there were also a few bureaucratic hurdles to be dealt with before CV would cruise again.

  “Is it true that you’ve got a prison population here?” Hartman asked.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t put it that way, sir. CV is a research installation now. There is a resident population of compulsory volunteers—we’re studying them for the effects of McNulty’s Disease.”

  They showed their boarding passes and rode up to the forward lobby, where they received temporary ID cards to be pinned on the left lapel. Then they took the elevator up to the Signal Deck, where Dr. Harriet Owen was waiting for them. She was a bit grayer than Bliss remembered her, but also more confident somehow, more in command.

  “Chief Bliss and Captain Hartman, welcome,” she said. “Did you have a good trip?”

  “Very nic
e,” said Bliss politely, and Hartman nodded. In fact, they were both suffering from jet lag, or jet advance you might call it, and Hartman had been barely civil at breakfast.

  Owen said, “As you know, we wanted you to come here to explore the idea of putting your knowledge and experience into what the computer people call an expert system, so that in effect the computer can do just what you would have done in any foreseeable situation.”

  “What if the situation isn’t foreseeable?” Bliss wanted to know.

  “Well, that’s the problem, of course, but Mr. Ewald is hoping that between you you can think of just about everything that could conceivably happen. Anyhow, it’s quite an exciting idea, and I hope you’ll enjoy the experience.”

  “Yes. By the way, I mentioned to Mr. Corcoran that I’d like to have the chance to talk to Randall Geller and Yvonne Barlow whilst I’m here.”

  “I know you did, and that interview will be set up for you after the session this morning.”

  “They’re all right, I hope?”

  “Oh, yes, they’re fine. They send their regards.”

  Ewald was waiting for them in the Control Center, a chubby bald young man with an unsuccessful mustache. He had rigged up a simulator in the form of a black box with cables snaking all over: he explained that by giving simple instructions to the simulator he could display canned views on the TV screens and even, to all appearance, in the quartz deadlights, and could make any desired readings appear on the instruments. Bliss then had to look at the instruments and say what orders he would give: then Ewald would ask him why he gave them, or why he hadn’t given other ones. After the first five minutes Hartman excused himself and wandered out into the Boat Deck corridors. An alert security officer said, “Excuse me, sir, are you supposed to be here?”

  “I’m a visitor,” Hartman said, showing his badge. “I thought I might just look round a bit.”

  The guard ran his minicom over the badge, looked at the readout. “This says you’re supposed to be in the Control Center.”

  “Quite right, but it’s very boring there.”

  The officer spoke into his phone. After a moment he got a reply, and said, “You can walk around the unrestricted areas, sir, until Mr. Bliss is ready to leave. I’m getting a security person to guide you.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Hartman said; but they waited until another guard came up, a young woman who introduced herself as Miss McMasters.

  “Which are the unrestricted areas, then?” Hartman asked as they set off down the corridor. There was something institutional about the place now; the walls, which had been papered before, were now painted in blue and cream. Odd how depressing those two colors could be.

  “All the public areas on the Boat Deck and Promenade Deck are unrestricted,” said Miss McMasters with a cheerful smile. “Will that do?”

  “Oh, certainly. Perhaps I should have asked, which areas are restricted?”

  “I’m sorry, that’s restricted information.”

  Practically no one was in the forward Boat Deck lobby except maintenance people in blue coveralls. The scientists, Hartman presumed, were in their laboratories and the prisoners in their cells. After a few more attempts to draw Miss McMasters out, Hartman gave it up and announced that he would like to leave. Miss McMasters escorted him to the exit, where his badge was taken away. Outside the checkpoint he hailed an amphicab, and spent the rest of the morning in the Olde Curiosity Shop, the Aquarium, and the charming half-timbered shops of the Olde Fishinge Village overlooking the new dike or levee or whatever they called it. A pleasing camouflage of sea air drifted from atomizers at every corner, and the smell of dead fish was hardly noticeable.

  Bliss found Geller and Barlow in a small conference room near Owen’s office on the Signal Deck; they looked a little thinner than he remembered them, not quite so much the carefree youth.

  “Randall and Yvonne, it’s good to see you,” he said. They shook hands and sat down. “Is it all right to talk here?”

  “You mean is it bugged?” Geller said. “I don’t know. I don’t care if it is or not.”

  “Well, are they treating you all right? Is there anything I can do?”

  “They’re treating us okay. Some of the others, not so good. They’re breeding them like lab animals, did you know that? Trying to produce a new stock of children infected at birth.”

  “Surely they can’t do that.”

  “Oh, yes, they can. We blew the whistle on them, but all that did was make them come out in the open with it. People who volunteer for the program get privileges, and people who refuse have a hard time, so they get the volunteers. But they’re easy on us, for some reason. They’re going to give us our old jobs in the marine lab, if we want them. Or we can just lay back and be passengers.”

  “They offered to let one of us go,” Yvonne said.

  “Namely me, because our kid drives me crazier than Yvonne. But we’re selling the place in Michigan anyway, and there wouldn’t be any point to it. There’s a chance we can talk Owen into letting us do some of our own research. Things could be worse. What are you doing here?”

  Bliss explained about the expert system. “Frankly, I wouldn’t care to trust myself to it. How long do you think they’ll keep you here?”

  They both looked grim. “Till Geoffrey is in college, probably,” said Yvonne.

  “But that’s monstrous! Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “We have a lawyer, and he’s petitioning for habeas corpus, but he says we shouldn’t hold our breath.”

  “Well, let’s look on the bright side,” said Geller. “Twenty years from now, we can collaborate on a book called Captives on CV.”

  “Not very snappy. How about Love Slaves Afloat?”

  They smiled at each other. And, all things considered, Bliss realized, they really were all right.

  A young woman came up to him at the bus stop. “Chief Bliss, I’m Ann Bonano of the Toronto Star. Welcome to Seattle.”

  “Thank you. How did you know I was here?”

  “Oh, we have our methods. Staying long?”

  “Just a week or so.”

  “And the purpose of your visit?”

  Bliss explained again about the expert system. Bonano took a few notes. “That’s interesting. Did you know that all the airlines are using expert systems in place of pilots now—and air controllers too?”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” said Bliss with a shudder.

  “Then is it true that you’re not going to sign on again as CV’s Chief of Operations?”

  “Heavens, no. I’m quite content to be retired, thank you. CV was a silly thing to begin with.”

  “How do you mean, silly?”

  “Well, you know, a prototype open sea habitat was what they called it, but it wasn’t the prototype of anything. We don’t need to build floating cities, the ones on land are much cheaper and more useful. The only thing sillier is L-Five, and I suppose that’s why it’s going forward.”

  Bonano thought a moment. “Do you think the pyramids were silly?”

  “Yes, absolutely. Magnificently silly. You know, we seem to have this incredible urge to build large useless things. The larger the better, of course, but it really helps to put the project over if they’re useless as well. I don’t know why that is, do you?”

  “No, I don’t. Well, thank you, Mr. Bliss.”

  That evening he and Hartman turned on the holo and found themselves watching the Senate hearings on allegations of cruelty to CV detainees. A pale, dark-haired young man was at the witness table.

  “… have that apparatus here, and I’d like you to watch, if you would, while I demonstrate it on myself.”

  “We will take that under advisement,” said Senator Gottlieb, a courtly white-haired man. “Now, Mr. Plotkin, you don’t deny, as I understand it, that this procedure was intended to inflict intolerable pain on the subject? In order to cause the parasite to leave his body?”

  “Senator, that’s correct, but as you know
, intolerable is a word that means different things to different people. The pain caused by this apparatus is moderate, I would say, but it’s unpleasant. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a bad toothache, Senator, or if anybody on the panel has? Well, that pain I would say is about twice the highest point reached on the Wolff-Wolf apparatus, and yet people endure it; I have myself. And then there’s childbirth, which I haven’t experienced.” Plotkin smirked.

  “The question is whether people can tolerate a pain that is natural in origin,” said Senator Gottlieb, “or whether they ought to be made to tolerate a pain inflicted by somebody else. We call that torture, as you know, Mr. Plotkin.”

  “Except when it’s done in the course of scientific research,” Plotkin said.

  “Then you don’t call it torture?”

  “No.”

  “Bloody barbarian,” Bliss said, “they ought to shoot him.”

  “But surely this isn’t still going on?”

  “If I thought so, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “It’s a prison ship, though.”

  Bliss squirmed in his chair. “I know it is. I ask myself, if I refused to cooperate, what would the result be? Would they stick to this insane scheme of teaching a computer to run CV, or would they hire somebody competent?”

  “There isn’t anybody as competent as you.”

  “That’s as may be. At least, if I do my job and the computer does what they say it can, it’s possible that Sea Venture won’t sink, prisoners and all.”

  Later the subcommittee allowed Plotkin to demonstrate the Wolff-Wolf machine. He put his bare arm under the lens and turned up the rheostat. “This is one dol,” he said. “Just a faint prickling warmth. This is three—this is five—seven—” The skin of his pale arm was turning pink. “This is eight.” He turned the machine off:

  “And is eight dols as high as you went, with the patient?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Plotkin, in preparing for this demonstration, did you use any pain-killer of any kind?”