She led them down the path, through trees, out again onto the grass, into the meeting in the park. She walked right through the middle of the crowd, with a solemn, distant expression on her green face. Many stood as she passed. Jackie Boone came out of the crowd and joined the group of followers, and her green grandmother took her by the hand. The two of them led the way through the crowd, the old matriarch tall, proud, thoroughly ancient, gnarled like a tree, and as green as a tree’s leaves; Jackie taller still, young and graceful as a dancer, her black hair flowing halfway down her back. A rustle went through the crowd, a sigh; and as the two and the group following them walked down to the central path by the canal, people stood and followed, the Sufis among them dancing a braid around their circumference. “Ana el-Haqq, and Al-Qahira, ana el-Haqq, ana Al-Qahira. . .” And so a thousand people walked down the canal path after the two women and their train, the Sufis singing, others chanting pieces of Hiroko’s areophany, the rest content to follow.
Nadia walked along holding hands with Nirgal and Art, feeling happy. They were animals, after all, no matter where they chose to live. She felt something like worship, an emotion very rare in her experience—worship for the divinity of life, which took such beautiful forms.
At the pond Jackie took off her rust jumper, and she and Hiroko stood in ankle-deep water, facing each other and holding their clasped hands as far overhead as they could reach. The other Minoan women joined this bridge. Old and young, green and pink. . . .
The hidden colonists passed under the bridge first, among them Maya herself, hand in hand with Michel. And then all kinds of people were filing under the mother bridge, in what felt like the millionth repetition of a million-year-old ritual, something everyone had coded in their genes and had practiced all their life. The Sufis danced under the clasped hands still wearing their white billowing clothes, and this gave a model to others, who stayed clothed but surged right out into the water, ducking under the naked women, Zeyk and Nazik leading the way, chanting, “Ana Al-Qahira, ana el-Haqq, ana Al-Qahira, ana el-Haqq” looking like Hindus in the Ganges, or Baptists in the Jordan. So that in the end many shed their clothes, but all walked into the water. And they stared around at this instinctive and yet highly conscious rebirth, many drumming on the water surface, making rhythmic slapping splashes to accompany the singing and chanting. . . . Nadia saw again and again how beautiful humans were. Nakedness was dangerous to the social order, she thought, because it revealed too much reality. They stood before each other with all their imperfections and their sexual characteristics and their intimations of mortality—but most of all with their astonishing beauty, which in the ruddy light of the tunnel sunset could scarcely be believed, could scarcely be comprehended or answered. Skin at sunset had a lot of red in it—but not enough for some of the Reds, apparently, who were sponging one of their women down with a red dye they had located, to make a counter figure to Hiroko, apparently. Political bathing! Nadia groaned. Actually all the colors were coming off in the pond, turning the water brown.
Maya swam through the shallows and knocked Nadia deeper into the pond with an impetuous hug. “Hiroko is a genius,” she said in Russian. “She may be a mad genius, but a genius she is.”
“Mother goddess of the world,” Nadia said, and switched to English as she plowed through the warm water to a little knot of the First Hundred and the Sabishii issei. There were Ann and Sax standing side by side, Ann tall and thin, Sax short and round, looking just as they had in the old days in the baths of Underhill, debating something or other, Sax talking with his face all screwed up in concentration. Nadia laughed at the sight, splashing them.
Fort swam to her side. “Should have run the whole conference like this,” he observed. “Ooh, he’s going to crash.” And indeed a board rider coming down the curved wall slipped off his plummeting board, and slid ignominiously into the pond. “Look, I need to get back home to be able to help. Also a great-great-great-granddaughter is getting married in four months.”
“Can you get back that fast?” Spencer asked.
“Yes, my ship is fast.” A Praxis space division built rockets that used a modified Dyson propulsion to accelerate and then decelerate continuously through the flight, which took a very direct line between the planets.
“Executive style,” Spencer said.
“They’re open for use by anyone in Praxis, if they’re in a hurry. You might want to visit Earth yourself, see what conditions are like firsthand.”
No one took him up on that, though it raised some eyebrows. But there was no more talk of detaining him, either.
People drifted like jellyfish in a slow whirlpool, calmed at last by the warmth, by the water and wine and kava being passed around in bamboo cups, by the accomplishment of finishing what they had come to do. It was not perfect, people said—definitely not perfect—but it was something, especially the remarkable nature of point four, or three—quite a declaration, in fact—a beginning, a real beginning—seriously flawed—especially point six—definitely not perfect—but likely to be remembered. “Well, but this here is religion,” someone sitting in the shallows was saying, “and I like all the pretty bodies, but mixing state and religion is a dangerous business. . .”
Nadia and Maya walked out into deeper water, arm in arm, talking with everyone they knew. A group of the youngsters from Zygote saw them, Rachel and Tiu and Frantz and Steve and the rest, and they cried, “Hey, the two witches!” and came over to squish them together with hugs and kisses. Kinetic reality, Nadia thought, somatic reality, haptic reality—the power of the touch, ah, my . . . her ghost finger was throbbing, which hadn’t happened in ages.
They walked on, trailing the Zygote ectogenes, and came on Art, who was standing with Nirgal and a few other men, all drawn as by magnet to where Jackie still stood by the half-green Hiroko, her wet hair slicked over her bare shoulders, her head thrown back laughing, the sunset glaring off her and giving her a kind of hyperreal, heraldic power. Art was looking happy indeed, and when Nadia hugged him, he put an arm over her shoulder and left it there. Her good friend, a very solid somatic reality.
“It was well done,” Maya told him. “It was like John Boone would have done it,”
“It was not,” Jackie said automatically.
“I knew him,” Maya said, giving her a sharp look, “and you didn’t. And I say it was like John would have done it.”
They stood staring at each other, the ancient white-haired beauty and the young black-haired beauty—and it seemed to Nadia there was something primal in the sight, primal, primeval, primate . . . these are the two witches, she wanted to say to Jackie’s sibs behind her. But then again they no doubt knew that. “No one is like John was,” she said, trying to break the spell. She squeezed Art’s waist. “But it was well done.”
Kasei came splashing up; he had been standing by silently, and Nadia wondered at him a little, the man with the famous father, famous mother, famous daughter. . . . And slowly becoming a power himself, among the Reds and the radical Marsfirsters, out there on the edge in a splinter movement, as the congress had proved. No, it was hard to tell what Kasei thought of his life. He gave Jackie a glance that was too complex to read—pride, jealousy, some sort of rebuke—and said, “We could use John Boone now.” His father—the first man on Mars—her cheery John, who used to love to swim the butterfly in Underhill, in afternoons that had felt like this ceremony, except that it had been their everyday reality, for a year or so there in the beginning. . . .
“And Arkady,” Nadia said, still trying to defuse things. “And Frank.”
“We can do without Frank Chalmers,” Kasei said bitterly.
“Why do you say that?” Maya exclaimed. “We would be lucky to have him here now! He would know how to handle Fort, and Praxis, and the Swiss and you Reds and the greens, all of it. Frank, Arkady, John—we could use all three of them now.” Her mouth was hard and downturned. She glared at Jackie and Kasei as if daring them to speak; then her lip curled, and she looked
away.
Nadia said, “This is why we must avoid another sixty-one.”
“We will,” Art said, and gave her another squeeze.
Nadia shook her head sadly. The peak always passed so fast. “It’s not our choice,” she told him. “It’s not something that is entirely in our hands. So we will see.”
“It will be different this time,” Kasei insisted.
“We will see.”
PART 8
—— Social Engineering
Where were you born?
Denver.
Where did you grow up?
Rock. Boulder.
What were you like as a child?
I don’t know.
Give me your impressions.
I wanted to know why.
You were curious?
Very curious.
Did you play with science kits?
All of them.
And your friends?
I don’t remember.
Try for anything.
I don’t think I had many friends.
Were you ambidextrous as a child?
I don’t remember.
Think about your science experiments. Did you use both hands when you did them?
I believe it was often necessary.
You wrote with your right hand?
I do now. I—I did then as well. Yes. As a child.
And did you do anything with your left hand? Brush your teeth, comb your hair, eat, point at things, throw bails?
I did all those things with my right hand. Would it matter if I hadn’t?
Well, you see, in cases of aphasia, the strong right-handers all conform pretty well to a certain profile. Activities are located, or it is better to say coordinated, at certain places in the brain. When we determine precisely the problems the aphasic is experiencing, we can tell pretty well where the lesions in the brain are located. And vice versa. But with left-handers and ambidextrous people there is no such pattern. One might say that every left-handed and ambidextrous brain is organized differently.
You know most of Hiroko’s ectogene children are left-handed.
Yes, I know. I’ve spoken with her about it, but she claims she doesn’t know why. She says it may be a result of being born on Mars.
Do you find this plausible?
Well, handedness is still poorly understood in any case, and the effects of the lighter gravity . . . we’ll be sorting those out for centuries, won’t we.
I suppose so.
You don’t like the idea of that, do you?
I would rather get answers.
What if all your questions were answered? Would you be happy then?
I find it hard to imagine such a—state. A fairly small percentage of my questions have answers.
But that’s rather wonderful, don’t you agree?
No. It wouldn’t be scientific to agree.
You conceive of science as nothing more than answers to questions?
As a system for generating answers.
And what is the purpose of that?
. . . To know.
And what will you do with your knowledge?
. . . Find out more.
But why?
I don’t know. It’s the way I am.
Shouldn’t some of your questions be directed that way—to finding out why you are the way you are?
I don’t think you can get good answers to questions about—human nature. Better to think of it as a black box. You can’t apply the scientific method. Not well enough to be sure of your answers.
In psychology we believe we have scientifically identified a certain pathology in which a person needs to know everything because he is afraid of not knowing. It’s a pathology of monocausotaxophilia, as Pōppel called it, the love of single causes that explain everything. This can become fear of a lack of causes. Because the lack might be dangerous. The knowledge-seeking becomes primarily defensive, in that it is a way of denying fear when one really is afraid. At its worst it isn’t even knowledge-seeking, because when the answers arrive they cease to be of interest, as they are no longer dangerous. So that reality itself doesn’t matter to such a person.
Everyone tries to avoid danger. But motivations are always multiple. And different from action to action. Time to time. Any patterns are a matter of—observer’s speculation.
Psychology is a science in which the observer becomes intimately involved with the subject of observation.
That’s one of the reasons I don’t think it’s a science.
It is certainly a science. One of its tenets is, if you want to know more, care more. Every astronomer loves the stars. Otherwise why study them so?
Because they are mysteries.
What do you care about?
I care about truth.
The truth is not a very good lover.
It isn’t love I’m looking for.
Are you sure?
No surer than anyone else who thinks about—motivations.
You agree we have motivations?
Yes. But science cannot explain them.
So they are part of your great unexplainable.
Yes.
And so you focus your attention on other things.
Yes.
But the motivations are still there.
Oh yes.
What did you read when you were young?
All kinds of things.
What were some of your favorite books?
Sherlock Holmes. Other detective stones. The Thinking Machine. Dr. Thorndyke.
Did your parents punish you if you got upset?
I don’t think so. They didn’t like me making a fuss. But I think they were just ordinary in that respect.
Did you ever see them get upset?
I don’t remember.
Did you ever see them shout, or cry?
I never heard them shout. Sometimes my mom cried, I think.
Did you know why?
No.
Did you wonder why?
I don’t remember. Would it matter if I had?
What do you mean?
I mean, if I had had one kind of past. I could still have turned into any kind of person. Depending on my reaction to the—events. And if I had had another kind of past. The same variations would have followed. So that your line of questioning is useless. In that it has no explanatory rigor. It’s an imitation of the scientific method.
I consider your conception of science to be as parsimonious and reductive as your scientific activities. Essentially you are saying we should not study the human mind in a scientific manner because it is too complex to make the study easy. That’s not very bold of you. The universe outside us is complex too, but you don’t advise avoiding that. Why so with the universe inside?
You can’t isolate factors, you can’t repeat conditions, you can’t set up experiments with controls, you can’t make falsifiable hypotheses. The whole apparatus of science is unavailable to you.
Think about the first scientists for a white.
The Greeks?
Before that. Prehistory was not just a formless timeless round of the seasons, you know. We tend to think of those people as if they resembled our own unconscious minds, but they were not like that. For a hundred thousand years at least we have been as intellectual as we are now. Probably more like half a million years. And every age has its great scientists, and they all had to work in the context of their times, like we do. For the early ones, there were hardly explanations for anything—nature was as whole and complex and mysterious as our own minds are to us now, but what could they do? They had to begin somewhere, eh? This is what you must remember. And it took thousands of years to learn the plants, the animals, the use of fire, rocks, axes, bows and arrows, shelter, clothing. Then pottery, crops, metallurgy. All so slowly, with such effort. And all passed along by word of mouth, from one scientist to the next. And all the while there were no doubt people saying, it’s too complex to be sure of anything. Why should we try at all? Galileo said, ??
?The ancients had good reason to think the first scientists among the gods, seeing that common minds have so little curiosity. The small hints that began the great inventions were part of not a trivial but a superhuman spirit.” Superhuman! Or merely the best parts of ourselves, the bold minds of each generation. The scientists. And over the millennia we have pieced together a model of the world, a paradigm that is quite precise and powerful, yes?
But haven’t we tried just as hard all these years—with little success—to understand ourselves?
Say we have. Maybe it takes longer. But look, we have made quite a bit of progress there too. And not just recently. By observation alone the Greeks discovered the four temperaments, and only recently have we learned enough about the brain to say what the neurological basis of this phenomenon is.
You believe in the four temperaments?
Oh yes. They are confirmable by experiment, if you will. As are so many, many things about the human mind. Perhaps it is not physics, perhaps it will never be physics. It could be that we are simply more complex and unpredictable than the universe.
That hardly seems likely. We are made of atoms after all.
But animated! Driven by the green force, alive with spirit, the great unexplainable!
Chemical reactions . . .
But why life? It’s more than reactions. There is a drive toward complexification that is directly opposed to the physical law of entropy. Why should that be?
I don’t know.
Why do you dislike it so when you can’t say why?
I don’t know.
This mystery of life is a holy thing. It is our freedom. We have shot out of physical reality, we exist now in a kind of godlike freedom, and the mystery is integral to it.
No. We are still physical reality. Atoms in their rounds. Determined on most scales, random on some others.
Ah well. We disagree. But either way, the scientist’s job is to explore everything. No matter the difficulties! To stay open, to accept ambiguity. To attempt to fuse with the object of knowledge. To admit that there are values shot through the whole enterprise. To love it. To work toward discovering the values by which we should live. To work to enact those values in the world. To explore—and more than that—to create!