Lovelock (32 page)

It was midnight before I could get back onto the network using my sleeper. Peter was watching me too closely all night for me to even think of going near the computer. Apparently he’s frustrated at having his back door removed and he’s hoping I’ll show him a way in. Fat chance, little boy.

I didn’t know what to look for, really. Mostly I just wanted to find out what it was that had been kept from me for all these months. First I browsed through the secret files of the security department and found out a few things. For instance, Carol Jeanne is important enough that they watch out for her “well-being,” which is why they were watching me in the first place, before they knew I had any particular computer skills. They were also watching Red. And I discovered that in their view, his liaison with Liz was deliberately flagrant. He wanted to be discovered. Well, that was old news. The surprise was that his whole affair with Liz was just a cover. Turns out the old boy was also doing therapy with Liz’s husband. Only the security people didn’t think it was therapy. They think Red has been a closet homosexual for a long, long time, and so has Liz’s husband, Warren. They have both Red and Warren on their list of sexually noncompliant citizens who slipped past the original psychological screening.

The notation with Red suggests that he might not have realized he was homosexual until he had Liz’s husband in therapy, at which time he might have recognized his own feelings in some of the things Warren talked about. Warren himself had simply lied his way onto the Ark. The security people didn’t seem too excited about it, though—they weren’t going to do anything, even though the Ark had been clearly limited to heterosexuals in order to maximize the breeding potential of the human population on the new world. After all, both Red and Warren had fathered children, and might well do so again. So whatever they did for pleasure was not going to cause problems as long as they were discreet. It was nice to know that they weren’t planning to give
Red
a little accident, the way they wanted to do with me. But then, Red is human, and I’m just an animal. Only one step up from a handbag.

It wasn’t even hard to decide not to tell Carol Jeanne. There was no telling how she would react to Red’s affair really being with Warren instead of Liz. It might be a relief—it wasn’t her failures that broke up their marriage, but rather his deep-seated sexual proclivities. Or it might be an even worse blow. Who could guess? It didn’t matter. Red had been careful to do none of this in front of Pink, so I could never have found it out from jacking in to his witness. There was no way I could know about his homosexual activities except from security files that I couldn’t possibly have legal access to.

When I had exhausted the possibilities of gossip, I began to look into the secure database that the gaiologists had all been using. The first thing I discovered was that it included a complete inventory of all the living material on the Ark. I could not believe that this had been a secret from me. When I so cleverly altered the open inventory to conceal the number of capuchin embryos, it never crossed my mind that a duplicate inventory existed on another network. I quickly searched for the capuchin embryos in order to make this inventory match the one I had altered to hide the fact that Faith had been brought out.

What I found was that a search on the word
capuchin
brought up two locations, not one. The first was the inventory I was looking for, and it was only a matter of moments to reconcile the two databases.

The second
capuchin
entry was the shocker. It led me into a database region that had no counterpart in the open inventory. The key word was
enhanced
. A dozen different species of genetically enhanced animals, including more embryos of enhanced capuchins than of the normal capuchins in the open inventory.

There were more like me. I could be replaced.

No, no, that’s not what matters, I realized. Not that I can be replaced, but that
they brought more like me
.

There were notations all over the enhanced section. Detailed instructions about how to perform the surgical operations that would hook up our i/o jacks. About inserting the discipline modules that would release endorphins as a reward and stimulate pain centers in the brain as a punishment. About how to train each enhanced species to be reliable witnesses.

And no section was bigger than the one on enhanced capuchins. I was pleased to learn that we were the smartest and most useful of all witnesses, by miles—but there were clear warnings about how unstable we tended to be and how to watch for signs that an enhanced capuchin was “out of control” and was therefore “an appropriate candidate to be destroyed.” Now the words about me in the security department’s files made sense. It wasn’t just that the bodybuilders were eager to kill monkeys. It was
policy
. It was in the instruction manual that came with the enhanced model capuchin.

I certainly fit the list of warning signs. I was definitely out of control. I was pleased to see that successful masturbation was one of the most important signs. “If the capuchin is able to override the disciplinary response to sexual stimulation, it must be destroyed at once, whether there are potential breeding partners available or not.”

Apparently I wasn’t the first to try what I was trying. I imagined some predecessor back on Earth, struggling as I was struggling, and then getting caught. They probably killed him in a humane manner—a needle in the neck? Or did they take more relish in it? A hammer on the head. A bullet in the brain. Vivisection to find out how he went wrong.

Or she. Maybe she even got pregnant. Maybe she even had babies.

Then again, maybe not. Because as I read on, one message became clear. Enhanced animals could not breed successfully with unenhanced animals ostensibly of the same species. The genetic alterations had changed us too much. Some matings could result in offspring, but most were deformed and all were sterile.

I thought of the experiments that had given them this information and shuddered with loathing.

Then I thought of little Faith, despondent in her miserable nest. I had brought her to life in order to breed with her. But it was an impossible project to start with. All that would result, when she finally reached sexual maturity about the time we reached the new world, would be deformed babies. Or maybe one or two healthy ones, and only another four or five or six or ten years later would I finally realize that the healthy ones were sterile anyway. And by then it would be too late to start over.

There were enhanced capuchin embryos on board. The secret inventory told me exactly where they were, and I could get to them. It’s what I should have done in the first place, only I didn’t know.

And now what was I going to do with Faith? If she was discovered, it would clinch the security service’s opinion of me. I had to continue to conceal her. And yet even if she lived to adulthood, what would I do with her? I couldn’t mate with her. It would be like breeding with a completely different animal. Like mating with a cat or a fish. And I could never teach her to be quiet. I would have to hide her all the time. I had expected that, of course. I knew she would never be bright enough to enlist her in my plans. But I thought, in my vain imaginings, that when she started bearing my children she would be happy enough, nursing and nurturing them, even as they grew up to be smarter than her. But there wouldn’t be any offspring. Her life would be one of continual confinement, with no purpose in it—no mate, no young, no freedom. Pointless, endless captivity.

I found myself hoping that she would hurry up and die.

The thought made me sick. I had only just realized that I loved Faith, and now I was wishing for her death? What kind of monster was I? Suddenly she no longer fit my plans and instead she was dangerous to keep around, so I wanted her dead.

Until that moment, I had thought of her as being an infant
of my kind
. Even though she wasn’t enhanced, we were both capuchins, weren’t we? Now, though, I knew that we were not of the same species. We could not mate and produce fertile offspring. Therefore, in my view, she could not be a member of my sentient tribe. She was not a
person
, but an animal.

Yet there was no change in her. What was the transformation that turned her from beloved future spouse to dangerous and inconvenient animal? It was only in me. Or rather, in my knowledge. I knew now that she could never be what I needed and wanted her to be. She was not “one of us,” even though on the Ark I was the only one of “us” that existed in any form warmer than a frozen embryo.

I dropped out of my sleeper program and fled the computer, fled the room, fled the house. I soon found myself on the wall, climbing to the nest.

Not a nest, I realized now, looking at it, looking at her eyes gazing at me through the mesh of the box. A cage. That’s what I had created for her, even if I refused to admit it. A cage, because I knew all along that I could never trust her to be free. She wasn’t going to stay in that box only until she became strong and clever enough to handle herself on the wall. I was going to have to keep her in a cage forever, and I realized now that I had planned it that way all along, even if I didn’t admit it to myself. Because I could never have trusted her to understand the need for discretion, or what discretion even consisted of.

I went inside the nest and she reached for me. She didn’t always do that. Was it a sign of strength? Yesterday it would have made me feel hopeful. Now it made me sick at heart. It was no longer useful for her to live. And yet what was I supposed to do? She was alive. She depended on me for every drop of water, every bite of food, every stroke of affection. If I simply abandoned her, she would soon die, yes—but she would die yearning for me, wondering why I had abandoned her…

But she was an animal, right? She didn’t have feelings, right?

That was humanist thinking: Because animals aren’t exactly like us, they are infinitely different, wholly other. Thus we can treat them however we like.

But animals are not wholly other. Their consciousness steps down from ours in infinitesimal steps, just as there is infinite variation among us. Who is to say that the most intellectual and creative of chimpanzees is not above the level of the most stupid and brutal of humans? And behind chimpanzees, other primates, and behind them, perhaps, dolphins or dogs, whales or cats. None of them wholly different from us, but rather differing only in degree. Capable of love, of feeling, of knowing, of remembering. And so if it matters how you treat humans, then it matters how you treat animals.

Not that animals can’t kill and eat their prey—those species differences are real, and nature teaches each animal to value the survival of individuals of its own species above all others. Why should we be different? I have a right to protect my own reproductive future. This capuchin monkey, even though I brought it to life, is nevertheless a danger to me. I have a right to protect myself from the danger it poses.

I also have a responsibility to protect it from all harm, because I brought it to life, because it trusts me, it loves me, and I have loved it. No, I can’t lie to myself, I still love it.

I am immobilized. I must act, and quickly. I must either move Faith or remove her entirely. She can’t stay much longer on the wall. There are places now that have already been checked for launch conditions by Maintenance, and I can move her. But the new nesting place is dark. She’ll be terrified. Her life up to now has already been lonely, full of terror and ill health. Now, unaccustomed as she is to gravity, shall I take her into a place of darkness where the heavy fist of weight will hold her down like shackles? And then shall I strap her down to endure in terror and solitude the hours of complete weightlessness followed by gradual acceleration, with frightening new noises, all in utter darkness? She is so fragile—the chances of her living through the ordeal are slim. Her life is now pointless and unhappy. It would be merciful for me to help her die in peaceful sleep.

Merciful and
convenient
. See how I rationalize. See how I persuade myself that what I must do is actually best for her in the long run. Is this how Nancy’s father and mother justified the terrible life they gave her? It’s her fault. We’re doing this for her best good. She asked for it. Blame the victim, exonerate the perpetrator.

I will not exonerate myself. It may be that by killing her I would be sparing her much suffering—but I would have spared her far
more
suffering if I had never been so selfish and stupid as to pull her out of her embryonic hibernation. What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking, I was fantasizing and then acted on my fantasies of rebellion, of propagation of my own tribe. She was never real to me until it was far too late.

So now I hide from the decision I must make. I write, I write, I write. Carol Jeanne sees me, busily typing, and she doesn’t bother to read what I’m writing. She’s so busy; she thinks I’m helping. But I’m not helping. I’m writing bits and snatches of all that has happened, I’m trying to explain how I got to the place where I am now, trembling on the cusp of becoming what I most hate—a sentient creature who feels he has the right to do whatever he wants to a fellow creature he thinks of as a beast. I know what I must do. But I also know that if I continue as I am, doing nothing, I will have made the other decision: that my life is
less
important than Faith’s. For if she is found—and if I do nothing, she will certainly be found—then I am dead.

And would she live even in that case? I think not. She’s too sick and weak. I think the humans would put her to sleep then, perhaps with the same poison they will use to kill me. An injection, given without emotion or compassion. A disposal of the inconvenient. And they will call themselves merciful for killing her. Why, then, can’t I accept that valuation and do it myself first?

They won’t consider it a mercy to kill me, though. They will watch me die with relief.

That’s why I’m writing this, I think. Because I see my own death. So I have caused this text file to be hidden away in the computer network. As long as I continue to access my sleeper program, this account stays hidden. But if I stay away from the sleeper program for more than a hundred days in a row, the sleeper will cause this text file to be replicated on every computer in the system. It will appear as a long mail file, asking every human on the Ark to read it. Then you will know that, though I am dead, I was once alive. Not just a monkey—or, if a monkey, then at least a monkey capable of having the same kind of moral struggles that you, too, would have, if you were capable of recognizing the existence of sapient beasts.

I toyed with the idea of vengeance. Of having the sleeper, when it delivers this file, then destroy the entire network and leave you all helplessly drifting through space, unable to access your computers and unable to rebuild them fast enough to save yourselves from the collapse of the delicate life support systems. But I am not a monster, nor do I fancy that my life is the primary purpose of the cosmos. If I die, most of you who read this will be innocent of wishing for my death. Why should I then kill you? What would that make
me
, if not a mass murderer?

So I have limited myself to disabling the sysops’ control over the network for twenty-four hours when this account is delivered to you. That will give you time, all of you, to read it if you care at all; to print it out. To rename the file, to copy it in several places. Then when the sysops regain control, they can’t wipe out my account by using their universal control over the mail system. I will still be alive.

And something else will be alive, too. My sleeper program. They can’t get rid of it. Long after I’m dead, it will live on. It will do no harm, and no one will ever be able to access it but me. No one will know it is there. But it will still be there dreaming, watching in its sleep, waiting for my keystrokes to wake it up. It is my one child that will live beyond my own life.

It is not much. And it is not enough.

I was writing about my first attempt at dealing with freefall up on the wall of the Ark when suddenly there was the most awful shrieking from the front room. Mamie, of course, but this wasn’t her normal histrionic voice. I rushed to the door just as Carol Jeanne rushed past, followed by the girls, sleepy and terrified.

Mamie was in the front room, her face pressed against a wall, sobbing uncontrollably, for all the world like a child who had been disciplined. Red was there, with Penelope and Dolores and Neeraj. Red was trying to comfort his mother. I knew at once that Stef had died.

Red looked at Carol Jeanne. “A second stroke, far more massive than the first. It carried him off within minutes. There was nothing they could do.”

Dolores and Neeraj came to Carol Jeanne and embraced her lightly. Penelope used the moment to gather Mamie to her ample bosom. No one thought that perhaps I might also need comfort. Not even me. I stood there, transfixed. Stef is gone. Just when he wins his freedom, he dies. Just what is going to happen to me. And he died paralyzed, just as I will die from immobility. And what did his declaration of independence from Mamie accomplish, in the end?

Within a few hours, it was clear that he hadn’t even accomplished his own funeral. Hadn’t he specifically forbidden Mamie to plan it? And yet Red acquiesced to her will on every point. Yes, it would be held in the meetinghouse of Mayflower village before it was dismantled. Mamie would choose the speakers, the songs, the singers. They would even spread the word. She would have her way with him even after death.

Carol Jeanne rebelled at this as soon as she could get Red alone. “You can’t do this,” she said. “You know he forbade all of this. It was virtually his last request.”

“Funerals are for the living,” said Red. “Not for the dead. Mother needs the comfort. Father doesn’t.”

“Maybe
I
need—maybe even
Mamie
needs to see that in the end, she didn’t control him after all.”

“Mamie never controlled him, Carol Jeanne,” said Red disgustedly.

“What planet were you living on? Ever since I’ve known them, she ran him around on the end of a stick.”

“He was a grown man,” said Red. “He could have left at any time. But even after I was grown, he stayed. Did you ever think why?”

“His will had been so sapped by then that—”

“Pure bullshit, Carol Jeanne. Wills don’t get sapped. People stay in hideous relationships like that because they’re getting something from it. Father was getting something from Mother, even if you couldn’t see it.”

“What, she was good in bed?”

Red laughed lightly. “Maybe she was, but he never gave her much chance to find out.” He shook his head. “You didn’t grow up with them, Carol Jeanne. I loved my father. I love my mother. But I also lived in constant rage. Not at her, really, because she was like a child, utterly selfish and incapable of recognizing what she was doing. But
he
knew. He saw how she controlled me, manipulated me, battered me emotionally, and he did nothing. I hated him for that, because I knew that he was aware of everything and he let it all happen. So I found my own accommodation. I got along. I eventually learned how to calm Mother down. How to pick my battlefields. How to hand her a small victory so she wouldn’t notice a big defeat. It was a very delicate dance, Carol Jeanne, but I learned how to do it, and until I had to balance a wife’s demands along with my mother’s, it worked very well.”

Carol Jeanne was listening, I knew it, and learning things she had never understood before. But this last could not go unanswered. “So it was
me
who disrupted the happy household, is that it? You’re even more tied to her apron strings than I thought.”

“I daresay Mother has never worn an apron in her life. Not even a pinafore.” Red grinned mirthlessly. “I’m not blaming anything on you. I’m just telling you that it won’t do Father any harm to let Mamie have the funeral she wants—and it will make life considerably easier for the two of us. Let her play the loving wife. She did love him, you know.”

Carol Jeanne laughed derisively.

“It was a selfish, possessive love,” said Red, “but it was all she knew how to give.”

“Why can you be so deeply understanding of her, and so completely incapable of understanding me?”

“Because you never needed me the way Mother needs me,” said Red. “You never needed anybody.”

“If you had ever bothered to come to know me, you’d know that that is the exact opposite of the truth.”

“Well, well. So we part in utter ignorance of each other.”

Carol Jeanne turned away from the most painful subject and went back to the original issue. The funeral. She knew the right and wrong of
that
, anyway. “What if I file a protest about the funeral? Will you lie under oath and deny that Stef asked to have his ex-wife barred from his funeral?”