CHAPTER 17

Scholar

“Our mandate,” said the expendable, “is to serve no individual human being at the expense of the species, but rather to preserve and advance the human species, even if at the expense of a cost-effective number of individuals.”

“Cost-effective,” echoed Ram. “I wonder how you determine the cost of a human life.”

“Equally,” said the expendable.

“Equally to what?”

“Any other human being.”

“So you can kill one to save two.”

“Or a billion in order to bring to pass circumstances that will bring about the births of a billion and one.”

“It sounds rather cold.”

“We are cold,” said the expendable. “But raw numbers hardly tell our whole mandate.”

“I am eager to know,” said Ram, “on what besides numbers you judge the preservation and advancement of the human species.”

“Whatever enhances the ability of the human race to survive in the face of threats.”

“What threats?”

“In descending order of likelihood of extinction of the species: collision with meteors above a certain combined mass and velocity; eruption of volcanoes that produce above a certain amount of certain kinds of ejecta; plagues above a certain mortality rate and contagiousness; war employing weapons above a certain level and permanence of destructive power; stellar events that decrease the viability of life—”

“It seems to me,” said Ram, “that if we succeed in planting a viable human colony on this new world, we will have made it impossible for any of these to wipe out the species.”

“And if we succeed in planting nineteen viable human colonies—”

“All nineteen would be equally affected by your list of dangers, should they happen to this planet or this star. One bad meteor collision wipes out all nineteen.”

“Yes,” said the expendable.

“Yet it matters to you that we specify nineteen colonies, and not just one.”

“Yes,” said the expendable.

There was a long silence.

“You’re waiting for me to make a decision about something.”

“Yes,” said the expendable.

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” said Ram.

“We cannot think of the thing we cannot think of,” said the expend able. “It would be unthinkable.”

Ram thought about this for a long time. He made many guesses about what the required decision might be. He said only a few of them aloud, and the expendable agreed every time that this would be a useful decision, but it was not the crucial one.

A decision that would explain the importance of having nineteen colonies in order to preserve and advance the survival of the human species. Ram went through every decision that would have to be made, including the degree of destruction of the native flora and fauna that might be required, and won the agreement of the expendables that every effort would be made to create a thorough and representative genetic record, seed bank, and embryana of the native life forms of the planet, so that anything destroyed in the process of establishing the colonies might be restored at some later date.

But even this decision was not the crucial one.

And then one morning he realized what the expendables were waiting for. It came to him as he was pondering what it meant that the computers and expendables agreed that the cloning of the starship and the travel backward in time were caused by Ram himself. Most humans could not alter the flow of time. One might say that no human had ever done so. And if that statement was still true . . .

“I am human,” said Ram, with perhaps more emphasis than the sentence required.

“Thank you,” said the expendable.

“Is that the full decision that you wanted?”

“If that is the full decision that you want, then we are satisfied.”

This was such an ambiguous answer that Ram demanded clarification.

“But there is nothing to clarify,” said the expendable. “If it is your full decision, complete and final, we will act accordingly.”

“Then it is not my final decision until I understand all the implications of it.”

“It is not within the capacity of a human mind to understand all the implications of anything. Your lifespan is not long enough.”

That had been time enough for Ram to put the situation, as he understood it, into words. “What you seem to need,” said Ram, “is a definition of ‘human species’ before you can plan the colonies. This means that you contemplate circumstances in which the definition of ‘human species’ might be in question.”

“We contemplate billions of circumstances,” said the expendable.

“But not all of them?”

“Our lifespan, too, is finite,” said the expendable.

Another question occurred to Ram. “Do you have evidence that there is a species on the new planet that might have intelligence at the level of humans?”

“No.”

“Or above the human level?”

“No.”

So they weren’t trying to squeeze an alien species into the definition of what was human.

But they needed to be reassured, thought Ram, that whatever I am, it is included in the definition of the human species. Otherwise, I would have been used to advance the survival of the colonists and their offspring, but my own genetic survival would not have been protected, because I am so different from other human beings that something going on in my mind affected the flow of time and the fabric of reality.

If I reproduce, then my difference might be passed on to my descendants. For that matter, living here in isolation from the rest of the human race for at least 11,191 years, who could guess what other differences might develop between us and the rest of the human species back on Earth?

Ram did his best to be precise, to speak like a scientist or lawyer. “The definition of ‘human species’ shall include the existing range of genetic variability and all variations of it that might come to be, as long as the variations are not likely to be harmful to the survival of the human species in general.”

“Vague,” said the expendable.

“On this world or any other,” Ram added.

The expendable said nothing.

Ram thought a moment and tried again. “‘Human species’ means the interreproducing gene pool now understood to be human, plus all future variations on the human genome even if they cannot interreproduce with the existing gene pool, provided that the future variants do not threaten to destroy or weaken the survival chances of the existing gene pool, either deliberately or inadvertently.”

The expendable was silent for a long five seconds.

“We have discussed your definition, analyzed its ramifications to a reasonable depth, and accept it,” said the expendable.

“Meaning that I gave you what you wanted?”

“Ambition and desire are human traits. You gave us what we lacked.”

•  •  •

While Rigg had the ability to perceive paths without regard to walls or distance, in the confusion of Aressa Sessamo there was a practical limit to how far he could follow any path that wove in and out among all the threads of the city. Here inside the walls of Flacommo’s house, Rigg could track everyone who had ever lived here, though most of them weren’t interesting. Rigg mostly cared about people who came in and out of the house for the past year or so—and the paths that revealed to him the secret passages of the house.

He also tried tracing the paths of the spies who watched from peepholes in the walls, but once they left the house, they took convoluted paths through the busiest streets, like fugitives walking up or down a stream in order to confuse the dogs tracking them by scent. He wondered if they had some idea of what he could do, but then saw that they followed this pattern long before Rigg came here—before anyone here knew he was still alive. Perhaps the spies simply walked on the main streets like anyone else, and it was mere chance that it made it impossible for Rigg to keep them clearly in view far enough to know whom they reported to. Or perhaps they were choosing evasive routes in order to avoid observation by ordinary agents of some other faction or power.