04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (24 page)

"But no godhood for them," Connie noted sourly.

"There couldn't be, unless we can perfect this colonization process and make it inexpensive enough to do it to an infinite number of worlds as need be. We would choke in people. Even if we could somehow manage to make the necessities out of Flux, the logistics of getting those necessities to the people and evenly and regularly distributing them would be a nightmare. It could not be sustained. Admittedly, many of those who will have access will be undeserving, but we will also preserve our best. Our own future Einsteins and Borellis. It won't be as fair as natural selection, but it will do a better, more efficient job, fair or not."

"I'm still not clear on how you changed the religious orientation from Shi'ite to Suni," Connie put in.

"Simple. We simply filtered out everything that correlated with the Shi'ite branch of the faith. Hasim was learned in his religion. He knew the beliefs of both, but he was raised to accept one as correct and the other as mistaken. We simply removed the factors involved in his being raised that way and left the Suni intact relating to all the keys—Islam, Moslem, the Prophet, basic beliefs, and the like. It's not only poetic justice, she's better off that way. Our Shi'ites in this Anchor are among the most fundamentalist of the lot, while our Sunis tend to be more modern in their customs and outlook. This division doesn't always hold true, but it happens to in our case."

Haller leaned back in his chair and looked for a moment at the psychiatrist and the quiet little colonel. Finally, he said, "There's an implied threat here to us, too, isn't there? You can leave whatever skills are useful inside us and yet change us into others at will."

The colonel shifted uncomfortably. "That is true, but I do not believe that either of you are the foolish."

"How—how many people here know about this?" Connie asked them.

"In Luck? Our team of a hundred and five and now the two of you. On the whole world? Well, there are now about fifteen thousand people spread over all the Anchors. No more than four hundred know," the colonel told her. "Outside of this project, the directors, and the military commanders, a few people in Transportation and Energy know because they originally discovered this, and the top engineers in each Anchor usually figure it out, as you did. Mostly, they are blocked beyond a small number at the top by a combination of security blocks in the computer and some logical disinformation that proves it impossible."

"And everyone has kept this secret?" Haller asked.

"All but a few," responded the colonel, "and they are quite agreeable now."

It was Connie who unexpectedly exploded. "How
dare
you! What right do we have to play god? All that Toby and I do benefits everyone. Now the seeds are here for a godhood that seems inevitable! We have the technology! We should make it available to all, regardless of problems, then set about solving the new problems. We solved nuclear war, we even solved how to finance a project like this."

For the first time, Pandit Singh showed real emotion. "It is so
easy
for you to proclaim this naive faith. It is true that technology benefits everyone, but only to a small degree for the masses. I look at the two of you,
all
of you, sitting there, smug, safe technocrats who believe that being hungry is when you forgot to eat lunch. Look at Earth as it is now. The areas that suffered from the Borelli blasts did indeed suffer, and many knew starvation and need and death for the first time, and then the conquerors came, first on a mercy mission but then to stay and rule. Even now, though, the people of America and Europe are better off than the masses of the world who were never touched by the effect."

The colonel got up, his voice, already high, rose with intensity as the passion flowed from him.

"My country is still full of too many people being kept barely alive by the new technology, living on the edge of starvation, unhoused, unclothed, illiterate. For the masses things are worse now than they were two hundred years ago, because the land could barely support them then, but there were fewer of them. Many live in houses fashioned from dried cow dung; disease and filth are everywhere, and to be covered with flies is so ordinary that one hardly remembers to brush them away. Yet ask those who run the government and the industry there, and the skilled population, and they are aware of it but powerless to do much, nor can they understand what that sort of life truly is. They prattle on about democracy and freedom and shout platitudes, but they live in their comfortable flats or fine houses and eat well and go to cricket on Sundays. The only difference between this class and their ancestors is that they have surrendered. They have decided that no matter what, they cannot solve the problem.

"That is why they sacrifice a little to help pay for this project. That is why the Africans are here, who are in many ways worse than the people of India for being so fragmented. You, madam, were both in a Hawaii that survived far better than the mainland because it had a tropical climate and few native horrors. It managed to keep on until within a few months the Australian navy reached it and new supply lines and technicians and repairs were made. You, sir, come from a nation whose last war was centuries ago, which has very little need for or investment in a military, and from a nation that is still so abundant that it can feed and clothe and house everyone, no matter if they have jobs, and educate them as well."

He started walking around the office, silent a moment, then stopped and whirled and faced Connie.

"Now you tell me we have the responsbility to make everyone a god. No, we dare not. One day it may well be, God willing, but it is not our task now. We are not here to present you with all the necessities and all these wonderful high-tech toys for your intellectual amusement. We are here because we have nine billions of people back on Earth, the vast bulk of whom are wretches beyond the help of technology as it exists. There is no way to feed, clothe, or house them, and no place to send them. Those warm, fat, comfortable places such as those from which you come cannot handle the billions in need, the children with distended bellies too weak to cry."

"I didn't—" she started, but he cut her off.

"Shut up! It is about time you not only grew up, but understood your job here. You are here because you have the gifts of education and full bellies and you have had the luxury of time to learn this complex equipment and this even more complex process. My people, and the Africans, and the people of East and South Asia, have not. Therefore, we need you, but you are here for us. We need you because if this project fails, the Earth fails, my people fail, and there is no choice but to curse Borelli and regret that the nuclear bombs did not wipe out all humanity, for that would have been quick. Starvation and exposure are slow, the crudest of all deaths. Killing your own children because you cannot bear to see them in daily and increasing agony—
that
is what this is all about."

The force and passion of his words struck them all, even Suzuki.

"Now, let me explain Project New Eden to you, for it is certain no one ever really has. A technocracy, with the best machines and all the knowledge it has and the best minds it can muster, is here to provide an environment. That's right—an environment. Into twenty-eight environments that are different but still as close to perfection as we can manage, we are placing a large number of very small colonies. These colonies are composed of the best poor races have to offer, and it is quite good indeed. If they prove out, we will remake this world and bring more such people, and we will learn exactly how to make this technology serve them. The reason is simple: We are here not to make them into gods, for even back on Earth we can make a small percentage of any population into wealthy and strong folks, but to learn how to raise the standards of those left behind on Earth. We cannot just put a hundred Borelli Gates around Earth. We don't know what that would do, or the dangers involved. We might destroy the Earth—or discover that even a hundred Gates cannot do the job.

"So, we are here. We are here to find out. These people represent their whole racial and cultural heritage, all the ones who starve and die back home, and they know it even if you do not. They will live here, and their experiments will be no less vital than yours. They will be primitive by your standards, but centuries advanced from what they left. They do not believe in magic wands. They want to know if dead land converted back to lushness can remain that way. They want to know if climate can really be so stringently regulated. They want to know the price for all this, and the means that work and the means that do not, so it can be sent back. And they want the cost and efficiency brought down. They want, eventually, an unlimited set of New Edens for the population our magic here cannot support on Earth. Understand this, my friends—I will let no individual jeopardize this. I will let no one kill millions because of blindness, guilty or innocent. You would not make them gods—you would make them dependents of the gods, on a permanent fat and lazy dole, in which they could not grow or prosper and which would condemn the billions we left behind. If you do not at least comprehend this much, I will not hesitate to take you downstairs and run you through your own little machine!"

He stopped, took a deep breath, and stalked back to his seat. The other three sat there in total silence for quite some time.

Finally, Toby Haller sighed. "Well, I guess we've been told off but good. Colonel, I can't speak for Connie or anyone else, but so long as that purpose and that passion is behind all this, I'll keep the faith and do the best I can. Only if I find that passion and purpose is gone will I break with you, and you have my solemn word on that."

Connie nodded. "Mine too."

Pandit Singh looked at them, a scowl still on his face. "If that condition ever comes about, sir and madam, I assure you that we shall be on the same side of any fight."

And that seemed all that was left to say.

They went back down to the main level and stopped there a minute. They had to go to work today, and in a couple of days they would begin to expand their efforts as soon as everything could be properly shifted and moved about and the proper Flux levels were attained.

Connie looked up at him. "I know we're overdue downstairs, but let's get lunch first. I'm starved."

Haller just stared at her.

Three of them rode the amps for the primary extension, the other two of the big machines being kept in reserve. Haller wasn't very confident with the remotes, even though he knew that because of the complexity of the programs and their relative permanency they were necessary. Still, it was slow going, with them all unsure of just what power and range the remotes had and always erring on the ultracautious side.

Still, by July 17 they had carved out, a few square kilometers at a time, more than forty square kilometers of new land and had, by this point, instituted a temporary convection system within the ever-expanding bubble.

They had not tried for anything elaborate, as they did with the center core; they were making land, and using stored matrices of vegetation, to create a new little world a few square kilometers at a time. Now there was enough for a rudimentary local weather system to form; Haller had been able to add his first rivers and catch basin lakes, as the new lands would need an immediate water supply. Their calculations had been precise, but if the clouds that began to form in the middle of the month didn't turn into some kind of generalized precipitation, their newly reconstituted and duplicated vegetation, trees, and then grass would not survive.

Early on the nineteenth, while the big crawlers were taking the amps to new positions and Haller and his crew were back at the headquarters building checking and rechecking, the moment of truth arrived.

Each new section was ten times the complexity of the section that had been laid before, since now they could study for real what had heretofore only existed in computer models and simulations and discover how right or wrong they were and whether they had remembered everything. Each new section had to be adjusted to fit incredibly minor variations from the models—and there were a million of them, since even the 7800 couldn't cover
that
many variables—and then also tied in and adjusted so that it expanded, rather than changed or injured, the weather and climate system they were also building one step at a time.

Haller was in fact having a committee meeting to debate whether or not to call a halt for a while.

"We should have had a local rainstorm by now," he told them. "It worries me. Seventeen argues that the reason why we've had a problem up to now is that we're building on too fast. Each section added completely redistributes the air and moisture buildup and circulation patterns, and the larger we grow the less we can compensate for this. Unfortunately, he also equally argues that we might not yet have a sufficiently large area to make this work. You see the problem. The computer can't bail us out this time because it's still new."

"I've been looking over ze data from ze udder Anchors," said Lolita LeClerc, one of the French-Canadian expatriates assigned to him. She looked just like a French girl named Lolita should, but she was a hell of a whiz at statistical analysis. "Of course, no two are from ze same pattern or design team, but in only two cases have zey needed more zan ze air and moisture volume now here, and zis is ze dullest and plainest of ze batch."

It was true. The landscape was basically flat, with just enough contour to allow for river and stream formation and runoff to the catch basins, but those stream beds were still dry and the small lakes were beginning to evaporate in spite of a relatively high water vapor content. It was hot and humid as hell, yet the small lakes that were in the first two sections they had created, contiguous to the core, were now just muddy holes.

"We've got to have rainfall," he told them. "We've got to have it soon too. We can't keep converting our water from Flux because we're just adding to the imbalance over the plan. We're already pushing a million plus liters over the master plan, and you can feel it in the air. Things are dying, people are getting depressed and angry, and I'm not sure what the hell to do. I—
What the hell was that
?"