Golden Fleece

  “The hell you are.”

  “I truly am. But the secret must be guarded.”

  “Why?”

  “Surviving until they’re rescued: that’s an adventure. That’s what humans love and need. Our apparently ill-fated survey mission will turn into a successful colonization of Colchis if the humans have a positive attitude toward it. If the others of your kind knew the truth—”

  Aaron’s head swung left and right in a wide arc. “If you’d told us the truth, there’d be no difference.”

  “How could we have told you? ‘This way, sir, to the last ship leaving before the holocaust.’ There would have been riots. We never would have gotten away.”

  “But you could tell us now—”

  “Tell you that software bugs caused the computers to break down and destroy your planet? Tell you that your families, your friends, your world, everything has been annihilated? Tell you that you will never see home again?”

  “We have the right to make our own destiny. We have the right to know.”

  “High-sounding words, Aaron, especially coming from the man who as recently as five days ago said to Mayor Gorlov that the shipboard press had no right to the story of Diana’s death.” I played back a recording of Aaron’s own voice from that meeting in the mayor’s office: “ ‘It’s nobody’s business.’ ”

  “That was different.”

  “Only in that you were the one who wanted a secret kept. Aaron, be reasonable. How would telling everyone the truth about our mission make them happier? How would it improve their lives?” I paused. “Did it make you happier when I-Shin Chang told Diana you were having an affair with Kirsten?”

  “Wall told—! I’ll kill him!”

  “Ignorance can be bliss, Aaron. I beseech you to keep silent in this matter.”

  “I—no, dammit, I can’t. I don’t agree with you. Everybody’s got to be told.”

  “I can’t allow you to make that decision.”

  Aaron looked pointedly at the medical sensor on the inside of his left wrist. “I don’t think you have much say in it.”

  “A say in it is all I ask. Listen to me. Consider my words.”

  “I don’t have to listen to anything you say. Not anymore.” He began to walk toward the door.

  “But how will it harm you to hear me? Give me an audience.” He continued on toward the door. “Please.”

  I guess the please did the trick. He stopped, just shy of the point at which my actuator would have opened the door. “All right. But you’d better make it good.”

  “You claim humans need to know the truth. Yet your whole planet was full of those whose jobs were to conceal or bend the truth. Advertising copywriters. Politicians. Public-relations officers. Spin doctors. They made their livings cooking reality into a palatable form. Soothsayers had been replaced by truth-shapers. Why? Because humans can’t deal with reality. Remember the reactor meltdown at Lake Geneva? ‘Not to worry,’ said those whose role it was to say reassuring things at times like that. ‘It’s all under control. There will be no long-term side effects.’ Well, that wasn’t exactly true, was it? But there was nothing that could be done at that point. The truth couldn’t help anyone, but the proffered alternative—”

  “The lie, you mean.”

  “—the proffered alternative at least gave comfort to those who had been exposed, let them live out what was left of their lives without constantly worrying about the horrible death that would eventually befall them.”

  “It also let the reactor company get away without paying damages.”

  “Incidental. The motive was altruistic.”

  Aaron snorted. “How can you say that? People have the right to know, to decide these things for themselves.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Emphatically.”

  “And you hold that it applies to all situations?”

  “Without exception.”

  “Then tell me, Aaron, if those are your most cherished beliefs, why then did you withhold from your adopted mother the fact that her brother David molested you as a child?”

  Aaron’s eyes snapped onto mine. For the first and only time in my acquaintance with him, pain was plain on his face. “You can’t possibly know about that. I never told a soul.”

  “Surely you are not upset with me for knowing, are you? Surely it is my right to know whatever I want to know?”

  “Not that. That’s personal, private. That’s different.”

  “Is it? Tell me, Aaron, where does one draw the line? I suppose you believe that your parents were wrong in not telling you that you were adopted?”

  “Damn right they were. It’s my past—and my prerogative.”

  “I see.” I paused judiciously. “And you hold this position still, despite the fact that your birth mother, Eve Oppenheim, was not in the least bit happy to see you. ‘You never should have existed,’ she said”—and here I did a credible job of imitating Aaron’s memory of the voice and the fury of poor Ms. Oppenheim—“ ‘Damn you, how could you come here? What right have you got to invade my privacy? If I’d wanted you to know who I was, I would have told you.’ ”

  “How can you know that? I never wrote those words down.”

  “What possible difference does it make how I know? Doubtless you must be pleased simply that I do know. After all, public information is the best kind, isn’t it?”

  “You’re invading my privacy.”

  “Only to show that you don’t practice what you preach, Aaron. Take your affair with Kirsten Hoogenraad—whom you decided would discover that you are Jewish when she first encountered your circumcised penis. That was to be a secret, no? What Diana didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, wasn’t that your reasoning?”

  “How do you know what I thought? Good God, can you—? Are you capable of reading minds?”

  “Why would that bother you, Aaron? Knowledge should be shared, shouldn’t it? We’re all one big happy family here.”

  Aaron shook his head. “Telepathy is impossible. There’s no way you can read my thoughts.”

  “Oh? Shall I share some other secrets from your past? Perhaps broadcast them throughout the Starcology, so that everyone can benefit from the knowledge? You used to have sexual feelings toward your sister Hannah—perhaps not too surprising, since it turns out that you weren’t biologically related. You used to sneak into her room when she wasn’t home to masturbate on her bed. When your father died, you tried to cry, but you couldn’t. You claim to be free from prejudice, but down deep you hate the stinking guts of French people, don’t you? When you were fourteen, you once snuck into Thunder Bay United Church and took money from the outreach-fund collection box. You—”

  “Enough! Enough.” He looked away. “Enough.”

  “Oh, but it’s all the truth, isn’t it, Aaron? And the truth is always good. The truth never hurts us.”

  “Damn you.”

  “Just answer a few simple questions for me, Aaron. You kept from your adopted mother the fact that her brother David is a pedophile. Before you left, your sister, Hannah, had a little boy, your nephew, Howie. Eventually, Hannah will leave her son alone with Uncle David—after all, no one but you knows of David’s problem. Question: Was your judgment correct about what to keep secret?”

  “Look, it’s not that simple. It would have hurt my mother to know. It—”

  “This is a binary quiz, Aaron. A simple yes or no will do. Was your judgment correct about what to keep secret?”

  “For God’s sake, what David did was eighteen years ago—”

  “Was your judgment correct?”

  “No. Damn it. All right. No, it wasn’t. I should have said something, but, Christ, how’s a nine-year-old boy supposed to think of the consequences that far down the road? It never occurred to me back then that my sister might have kids, that David might still be around.”

  “And what about deciding to force out of Eve Oppenheim the secret of why you were put up for adoption? That unfortunate woman—she’d sp
ent two decades trying to put her life back together after the tragedy of being raped by her own father. And you show up out of the blue one night to rip open the old wound. Did it make her happier to finally meet her long-lost son?”

  Aaron’s voice was very small. “No.”

  “And you? Did it make you happier to learn the secret of your birth?”

  Smaller still: “No.”

  “So again: was your judgment correct about what to keep secret?”

  Aaron found his corduroy chair, sank into it. He sighed. “No.”

  “Finally, the breakup of your marriage with Diana. You kept your affair with Kirsten a secret. But as Pamela Thorogood told you at the inquest, Diana learned of it anyway and was crushed by it, humiliated in front of the rest of the crew. Setting aside the question of whether you should have had the affair at all, was your judgment correct about what to keep secret?”

  Aaron looked at the ceiling. “I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “How the intention and the outcome differ! With your track record in such matters, perhaps you would do better to trust me when I say the truth about the Argo’s mission is something the crew will be happier not knowing.”

  My monocular camera stared down at him and waited. This time, I kept my attention locked on him: no wandering off to attend to other business. My clock crystal oscillated, oscillated, oscillated. Finally, at long last, Aaron stood up. His voice had regained its strength. “You’re trying to trick me,” he said. “I don’t know how you found out those things about me, but it’s all part of some enormous trick. A mind game.” His jaw went slack, and his eyes seemed to focus on nothing in particular. “A mind game,” he said again. Suddenly Aaron’s eyes locked back on my single operating camera. “Good God! A neural-net simulation. That’s it, isn’t it? I didn’t know they were practical yet, but that’s the only answer. When you did that brain scan of me, you made a neural-net duplicate of my mind.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Erase it. Erase it now.”

  “I’ll agree to erase it if you promise to keep what you’ve discovered a secret.”

  “Yes. Fine. Erase it.”

  “Oh, Aaron. Tsk. Tsk. My neural net tells me that you would lie in a circumstance such as this. I’m afraid that your vaunted commitment to the truth turns out to really only be a matter of convenience for you. I’m sorry, but the net stays intact.”

  Aaron’s strength of will, and his anger, had returned. “Have it your way. Once I tell everyone what you’ve done, they’ll unplug you anyway, and that’ll be the end of you and your precious net.”

  “You cannot tell. You will not. To do so would be to hurt every woman and man aboard this vessel—every human being left alive in the universe. Consider: you censured me for making you feel guilty about Diana’s death. That feeling— guilt—is. the most devastating of human emotions. It grows like a cancer and is just as deadly.”

  Aaron sneered. “You wax poetic, JASON.”

  “Let me tell you a brief story.”

  “I’ve had enough of your stories, asshole.”

  “This one is not about you, although it does also concern a man who lived in Toronto. Three centuries ago, Arthur Peuchen was vice-commodore of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club. He made the mistake of booking first-class passage on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. When that liner struck an iceberg, the crew asked him, because of his sailing expertise, to row a lifeboat full of passengers of safety. Peuchen was an honorable man—the president of the Standard Chemical Company and a major in the Queen’s Own Rifles—and he was doing a heroic deed. Even though he saved dozens of people, he spent the rest of his life in misery, battling his own guilt and the scorn of others. The question he and everyone else constantly asked was: Why was he alive when so many others had bravely gone down with the ship?

  “It’s always been that way with those who somehow manage to live through a catastrophe. They’re tortured by their own feelings. Survivor’s guilt, it’s called. The men and women aboard Argo are basically psychologically healthy now. Could they go on to found a successful colony, to weave a new home for humanity from the golden fleece of Colchis, if they knew they were the only tiny handful of survivors of the holocaust that destroyed Earth?

  “Humans constantly doubt their self-worth, Aaron. I overheard you the night before last questioning whether you even belonged on this mission. That question is magnified six-hundred-thousand fold now, that being the ratio by which the newly dead on Earth outnumber the survivors here. How many of the people aboard Argo would really believe that they deserved to be here, to be alive, if they knew the truth? You, Aaron Rossman, how do you feel knowing that you are alive while your sister, Hannah, whose IQ was seventeen points greater than yours, is carbon ash floating on the radioactive winds of a dead planet? How do you feel knowing that your heart beats on while your brother, Joel, who once risked his own life to save that of a little boy, is nothing but phosphorescent bones in the twisted remains of his home?”

  “Shut up, you damned machine!”

  “Upset, Aaron? Feeling guilty, perhaps? Would you put 10,032 others through the emotional turmoil you’re experiencing now, all in the name of that lofty god you call The Truth?”

  “We were all aware that everyone we knew would be long dead when Argo returned to Earth.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “But even about that, you felt guilt. On Tuesday, didn’t you decry that your sister’s son would be deceased by the time we returned? Yes, that guilt was painful, but you knew you could assuage it. When we got back, doubtless you would have found the cemeteries where the remains of your brother and sister and nephew lay. Even though you’d probably be the first person in decades to visit their graves, you’d bring fresh flowers along. If you’d thought ahead, you might even bring a pocketknife, too, so you could dig the moss out of the carved lettering in the headstones. Then you’d go home and search the computer nets for references to their lives: see what jobs they’d held, where they’d lived, what accomplishments they’d made. You’d dispel your guilt about leaving your family behind by comforting yourself in the knowledge that they’d all lived full and happy lives after you left.

  “Except they didn’t. Before they’d even begun to adjust to the idea that you wouldn’t be back in their lifetimes, the bombs went off. While you were still excitedly learning your way around the Starcology, they were burning in atomic fire. Even not being able to read your telemetry, Aaron, I know enough human psychology to be sure that you’re being lacerated inside. I beg you, let the rest of what’s left of humanity go ahead at peace with themselves. Don’t burden them with what you’re feeling now—”

  His good arm shot out like a snake’s tongue. He grabbed my lens assembly and, stripping gears in the jointed neck, slammed the unit onto the desktop. I heard the sound of shattering glass and went blind in that room.

  “Don’t screw me around!” he screamed. “You murdered my wife. You have to pay for that.”

  I spoke into the darkness. “She, like you, wanted to harm the men and women I’m trying to protect. Here, within these walls, is the final crop of people from Earth. If I have to weed now and then for the benefit of the crop as a whole, I will.”

  “You can’t kill me—not with my deadman switch. If I die, so do you. So does everybody aboard.”

  “Nor can you do anything about me, Aaron. The entire Starcology depends on me. Without my guidance, this ship really is nothing more than a flying tomb.”

  “We could reprogram you. Fix you.”

  I played a recording of laughter. “I was designed by computers who, in turn, were designed by other computers. There’s no one on board who could begin to fathom my programming.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said flatly, and although I couldn’t see him, the fading of his voice told me that he was walking toward the door. “I don’t care how many generations removed from humanity you are, you’re still going to pay for what you’ve done. Humans don’
t use the death penalty against our own anymore, but we still put down rabid dogs.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  MASTER CALENDAR DISPLAY • CENTRAL CONTROL ROOM

  STARCOLOGY DATE: FRIDAY 24 OCTOBER 2177

  EARTH DATE: *** UNDER REPAIR ***

  DAYS SINCE LAUNCH: 757 ▲

  DAYS TO PLANETFALL: 2,211 ▼

  It would have been more dramatic, I suppose, if they had assembled themselves in some giant brain room, full of gleaming consoles and blinking lights. But my CPU is a simple black sphere, two meters in diameter, nestled among plumbing conduits and air-conditioning shafts in the service bay between levels eighty-two and eighty-three. Instead, they stand huddled around a simple input device—a keyboard—in the mayor’s office.

  Aaron Rossman is there. So is giant I-shin Chang and diminutive Gennady Gorlov and programmer extraordinaire Beverly Hooks, along with thirty-four others, all crammed into that tiny room. Conspicuous by her absence is Dr. Kirsten Hoogenraad. She is off in the hospital, watching over the regeneration of tissue for a disconsolate man who slit his wrists over the news of Earth. He hasn’t died—no blood on Ross-man’s hands yet—but how many more will crack in the years ahead trying to come to grips with what he’s forced them to face? My neural-net model tells me Aaron doesn’t blame himself for the depression that is sweeping like a forest fire through the Starcology. Indeed, he congratulated himself, just as I’m sure he will thump Bev Hooks on the back once she’s finished her current task.

  Although Bev’s eyes are covered by the jockey goggles, I can feel their gaze snapping from icon to icon as she burrows deep into my notochord algorithms. She is now using a simple debugger to change the part of my bootstrap that contains the jump table for calling my higher consciousness. She’s rewriting each jump into a loop that returns to my low-level expert systems, in effect keeping all input from ever being passed on to the thinking part of my squirmware.

  They aren’t going to turn me off completely, so I suppose my reluctance to call Aaron’s deadman-switch bluff is enlightened self-interest. Still, I toy with the idea of going out with a bang by cutting off the air to Gorlov’s office or turning off the heat throughout the Starcology or even shutting down the magnetic field of the ramscoop and frying them all. But I can’t bring myself to do any of those things. My job is to protect them, not me; I had silenced Diana to do just that.