Mind, Machines and Evolution Part 15

"We know that you're from the Martian Federation, that you came in via Roosevelt s.p.a.ceport ten days before Anderscliff, posing as a structural engineer called Paul Langley, and that after a.s.suming the role of Hadley Kra.s.sen you spent some time touring around the continent to test your cover. I can give you a list of the places you stayed at if you want."

The a.s.sa.s.sin's face remained blank, but inwardly he felt uneasiness. If they had known this much all along, he would never have gotten within a hundred miles of Anderscliff. On the other hand, how could they have worked it out since his capture? He could think of no obvious flaw in his getaway arrangements.

"But let's start with introductions to prove that we are all civilized people," the Englishman continued. "I am Colonel Arthur Barling-this is Carl May. Our precise functions need not concern us for now. You are . . . ?" He let the question hang. The a.s.sa.s.sin remained silent.

"Never mind. We'll call you Hadley for the time being. Any objections?" He paused but there was no response. "Very well, Hadley, now let's get down to business. It's obvious that you were sent here after the most meticulous preparations in order to eliminate Brozlan. Equally obviously, you are just one member of a team that includes some extraordinary talents." Silence. "Just think of it-all that effort, all that distance . . . just for one man. A man of your undoubtedly high intelligence must have wondered what made him so important. I know that people like you are never told that kind of thing."

The colonel regarded him silently for a few seconds. Carl May continued to sit frowning, saying nothing.

The a.s.sa.s.sin guessed that he was the observer, there to study his reactions while Barling did the talking.

No doubt a camera was concealed somewhere as well.

The colonel carried on with what the a.s.sa.s.sin had already decided was an outwardly nonchalant probing for weak spots.

"It's the old, old problem that separates you and us, isn't it, Hadley-the breakaway pressures of the New World pulling against the restraining influences of the Old. On the one hand there's the progressive new ideology of the former colonial city-states, and on the other the conservative and tradition-bound regimes of Earth." Barling made an empty-handed gesture and pulled a face. "And so we hear the old song about an oppressed people yearning to be free and go its own way. But in reality it's an old story of another kind-a bunch of opportunists who've spotted something that's up for grabs, only this time it's a whole planet. So they feed out the same claptrap that we've been hearing for a thousand years . . .

liberty, justice, that kind of thing . . . and the incredible thing is that people like you still swallow it." An expression of disbelief spread across the Englishman's face. "Do you really believe that you'd be a penny's worth of anything better off if Mars did go its own way? I mean . . . Take that bunch that sent you off on your little errand. You can see the kind of methods that they don't think twice about using . . .

the sort of scruples that they have. What kind of society do you think they'd make for you if they didn't have to answer to anybody? Is that the great 'cause' that you're all so dedicated to fighting for?"

The Englishman paused and considered the Martian quizzically, but was rewarded only by a stare of indifference. This was the kind of thing that the a.s.sa.s.sin had expected. He knew that the mild taunts were intended to be provocative-to lure him into making the mistake of responding before he could think clearly.

Barling tried another angle. "Anyway, it couldn't possibly work, could it? Mars depends on the industrial capacity and resources of Earth. As long as that remains fact, any talk about Martian independence can be nothing more than an illusion. Without us you couldn't last a month."

The a.s.sa.s.sin's jaw tightened as he fought to repress the indignation welling up inside him. The statement the colonel had just uttered was outrageous. Mars had no natural resources worth talking about. With no biosphere, no hydrosphere, and virtually no atmosphere, the planet had never experienced the processes of erosion, biological activity, and marine deposition that had laid down the treasures of Earth. But the pioneers had not expected to find any. What they had expected to find was freedom-freedom from stifling bureaucracy and legislation, and the freedom to tackle their problems in their own ways. Their first problem had been the horrendous cost of importing every ton of needed material from Earth.

In answer, the scientists of Mars had realized a dream that was centuries old, but on a scale that no alchemist had ever imagined. They perfected techniques for trans.m.u.ting elements on an industrial scale.

The Martian wilderness was no longer a waste. Not only that. Scientists eventually learned how to use the elements that they had created to synthesize increasingly more complex compounds, until virtually anything they required could be derived from a few common, locally available raw materials. Fusion reactors had satisfied the demand for the enormous amounts of energy required by these processes.

The new technology from Mars had transformed the industries of Earth in a few decades; indeed, all the nations of Earth rose to levels of affluence that would have been inconceivable, even to the most optimistic, only fifty years previously. The costs of synthetic compounds from Earth's own processing plants had plummeted so far that it became uneconomical for Mars to develop its pilot installations into full-blown industries and it continued to rely on imports.

And now Barling was turning that fact around and using it to imply that Mars could never survive alone.

But it was Earth that would never have survived without Mars! Mars had paid its debt. It had earned the right to decide its own destiny, alone and without interference. The a.s.sa.s.sin continued to say nothing, but his eyes glared his defiance.

"Oh dear. This really isn't getting us anywhere at all," the colonel conceded. "If we carry on in this fashion, the conversation is going to be very dull and one-sided. Although I'm sure you'd find the story of why Brozlan came to Earth a fascinating one, I've a feeling I might be wasting my breath if I tried to tell it to you. Therefore, I won't attempt it. Instead, I'll get someone else to tell it to you-someone who, I'm sure you will agree, will be able to make it far more interesting." The colonel nodded briefly to the guard, who turned and left the room. Silence descended, to be broken after a few seconds by the colonel whistling tunelessly to himself through his teeth. The a.s.sa.s.sin remained expressionless, but deep inside he was becoming troubled.

Something was wrong. An alarm was sounding somewhere deep in his brain. There was something about the Englishman's tone and manner that didn't fit. The a.s.sa.s.sin hadn't expected moral reproaches or accusations of criminal outrage; he had already a.s.sessed Barling as a professional at this kind of business. But the Englishman's nonchalance was coming through too sincerely to be contrived. If Brozlan's removal had been so important to the Federation, it followed that it should also have const.i.tuted a major disaster to the Western Democracies of Earth. The seriousness of the situation should have been detectable in the way that Barling spoke and acted. It wasn't.

The guard returned, ushering in before him somebody who had presumably been waiting outside. For the first time, the a.s.sa.s.sin's iron self-control broke down. His eyes bulged, and he gaped across the room as if he had seen a ghost . . . which was not surprising.

"Good morning," said Professor Malleborg Brozlan.

Time seemed to stand still. For once, the wheels in the a.s.sa.s.sin's mind ground to a complete halt. No coherent thought formed in his head; no words came to his lips. This was definitely no illusion . . . but there was no doubt that the man he had left at Anderscliff had been totally, absolutely, unquestionably . . .

dead.

"Surprised?" The dryness in the colonel's voice did not conceal a faint trace of amus.e.m.e.nt.

The a.s.sa.s.sin closed his eyes and slumped back against the pillows. "How?" he managed, in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. "How is this possible?"

"So-you're hooked, eh? You've got to know, haven't you? You'll listen to what we have to say?"

The a.s.sa.s.sin nodded numbly without opening his eyes.

"Good." A pause. "Professor?"

The guard placed a spare chair at the foot of the bed. Brozlan sat down and began speaking. Clearly he had been following the conversation on a monitor outside the room.

"Maybe there were some hotheads among us." He nodded his snowy head slowly. "But the thought of a truly independent Martian civilization . . . free to benefit from all the lessons and mistakes that are written through the history of Earth . . . without having to inherit any of the consequences . . . a chance to begin again, in a way, but this time to get it right. It was a dream that fired the imagination and raised the pa.s.sions of practically every young man of my generation." The professor shifted his eyes and regarded the figure lying in the bed. "I'm sure you know the kind of thing I mean." Despite himself the a.s.sa.s.sin found his gaze drawn irresistibly to the apparition sitting a few feet away from him. Brozlan was real; he was warm; he was alive . . . and talking matter-of-factly to the man who, without a moment's thought or hesitation, had killed him.

"How can this be?" the a.s.sa.s.sin whispered again.

Brozlan looked at him coldly, but without overt malevolence. When he spoke again, his voice was sad.

"You know nothing of the power that exists on Mars today. You allow yourself to be manipulated by people who are interested only in serving their own ends . . . as I myself was once manipulated."

"I . . . don't understand." In spite of his resolve not to be drawn into conversation, the a.s.sa.s.sin was unable to restrain the question. "What power are you talking about?"

"Science!" Brozlan replied, his voice trembling slightly with sudden emotion. "The power of science. The domes of Mars contain some of the finest brains that the human race has ever produced. Think back over the last twenty or thirty years. Think of the discoveries and developments that have come from the laboratories of Mars . . . the whole science of gravitics and the first practicable gravitic drive; economical trans.m.u.tation of elements on a bulk scale; bulk synthesis of molecular compounds; computer biocommunications; genetic programming . . . the list is long. But do you think for one moment that all the knowledge acquired in those laboratories is public knowledge? Things have happened there, and are still happening, that people have never dreamed of."

The a.s.sa.s.sin stared at him incredulously for a few seconds. "Are you saying that you are a reincarnation?" he gasped. "Something like that is really possible?"

Brozlan shook his head briefly. "No, nothing like that. Let me begin at the beginning." He paused to collect his thoughts. "I am a physicist. I specialize in molecular structures. Practically all of the raw materials used in industry today are synthesized from artificially trans.m.u.ted elements-using techniques originally perfected on Mars." The a.s.sa.s.sin nodded, keeping his eyes fixed on the professor. Brozlan did not continue at once, but gestured toward the flask of water that stood on the bedside locker. Carl May filled a gla.s.s and pa.s.sed it to him, while Barling rose from his chair and began pacing to and fro between the bed and the window, his hands clasped loosely behind his back.

"To produce a full range of materials needed on Mars, it was not sufficient to just synthesize unstructured molecules in bulk," Brozlan resumed. "We needed to be able to duplicate, say, the crystal lattice structures of many metal-base compounds, or the polymer chains of organic substances-things that are abundant on Earth but totally lacking back there."

"I'd have thought that that's where you'd use traditional processing methods," the a.s.sa.s.sin muttered.

He didn't mind talking as long as it was he who was asking the questions. It could only be to his ultimate advantage to know more about what was going on.

"We could have done that." Brozlan nodded. His face creased into a frown. "But we were not satisfied with that idea. We had a virgin planet with no set ways or traditions to uphold. It seemed unsatisfactory simply to follow slavishly the methods that had evolved on Earth. We could have spent fortunes copying all of Earth's industrial complexes on Mars only to find them obsolete before they went into production.

We were convinced that there had to be a better way."

The a.s.sa.s.sin thought for a moment and looked puzzled. "How?" he asked at last. Brozlan's eyes glinted. He replied: "Consider any form of component that is used in the construction of a larger a.s.sembly . . . the parts of a machine, for example. How is the component made? We take a lump of whatever material we need and cut away from it all the excess to leave the shape that we require. That forms the basis of just about every machining process that is used traditionally."

The a.s.sa.s.sin shrugged. "What other way is there?"

"Deposition!" Brozlan peered at him intently. "Instead of cutting material away to leave the part, we deposited material to build the part up!"

"You mean like electrolytic forming? That's not new."

"The idea isn't," Brozlan agreed. "But the way we were doing it was. You see, electrolytic forming works only with certain metals. We were working with every kind of molecule."

"You mean you could build up something out of anything-any substance at all?"

"Exactly! And it didn't have to be all the same kind of molecule. We could mix them together any way we chose. We could produce a solid block that was phophor-bronze at one end and polythene at the other, with a smooth transition from one to the other in between. It opened up a whole new dimension in engineering design possibilities. The whole process was computer-controlled. A designer could develop a program to create any part he wanted out of any material he chose or any combination of materials-molecule by molecule if he really wanted to go down to that level of detail."

"Molecule by molecule . . ." The a.s.sa.s.sin's face registered disbelief.

"Nevertheless, it worked," Brozlan told him. "There have been experimental plants on Mars operating for years now, turning out goods that are higher in quality and cheaper to produce than anything that could ever come out of the factories of Earth-even things normally processed from organically derived substances, such as paper, oils, fats, sugars . . ."

"Oil . . . food . . . paper . . . synthesized from trans.m.u.ted elements? Why have we never heard of such things?"

"Politics." Brozlan sighed. "By that time there was a different brand of thinking among the higher echelons of the Federation government. Ambitious and unscrupulous men were taking over. They did not see these discoveries as potential benefits for all mankind, but only as a means of securing full economic autonomy. They began to see themselves as undisputed rulers over a self-sufficient world. That purpose would be served better if Earth were allowed to lag behind. The Federation authorities a.s.sumed tight control over our work and placed a strict security blanket over everything. That was why few people knew about what we were doing. That was also where the movement for Martian independence had it origins. Only a handful of individuals stand to gain, and not in the ways that are popularly believed."

"Interesting, isn't it, Hadley?" the colonel came in, spinning on his heel to face the bed. "But if you think that's hard to swallow, wait until you hear the next bit." He nodded at Brozlan, who continued: "That was just one aspect of the research going on at that time. Another aspect was Dr. Franz Scheeman's work on structural scanning with neutrino beams. Scheeman developed a method for scanning a material object, inside and out, and for extracting from the transmitted beams a complete encoding of its arrangement of atoms and molecules. It was a.n.a.logous to the way in which an old TV camera encoded the information contained in a visual scene." Brozlan took a deep breath. "The real breakthrough came when we combined Scheeman's technique with the molecular-deposition process that we have just been talking about."

Silence reigned for a long time while the a.s.sa.s.sin digested the professor's words. Then his eyes widened slowly and transfixed Brozlan with a dumbfounded stare. "You're joking . . ." the a.s.sa.s.sin breathed at last.

"A solid-object camera!" the colonel confirmed for him. "Yes, Hadley, you've got it. They could scan an object and derive a complete structural code for it. From that code they could generate a computer program to control the deposition process. Result-a perfect a.n.a.log, a molecule-by-molecule copy of the original. And, of course, if they could make one they could just as easily make as many as they liked.

Think of it, Hadley . . . but think of some of the deeper implications, too. What would happen if somebody suddenly introduced that kind of technology into a complex and established economy like Earth's? Suppose that once you'd built the prototype of, say, a domestic infonet terminal"-he pointed to the bedside console-"you could churn out a million of them, all for peanuts. What would happen to the conventional electronics industry then? What about the components industry that supplies it? What would happen to the industries that supply all the parts-the plugs, sockets, metalwork, moldings, and all that kind of thing? And then, what about the service industries that depend on all those in turn . . . office equipment, furnishings, data processing, real estate, and so on through the list? How could they survive if half their customers and half their business went to the wall?" The colonel spread his arms wide in the air.

"All finished, Hadley. Total collapse. How could you cope with ninety-five percent of a planet's population being suddenly redundant? How could a global economy, with its roots buried in centuries of steady evolution, survive an upheaval like that?"

"You see," Brozlan added, "that is exactly what the Federation government wanted to do. They wanted to rush into setting up a huge Martian industrial conglomerate based on the new technology, flooding Earth's markets with goods at giveaway prices."

"Earth would have been ruined," Barling interjected. "Or at best would have faced the prospect of existing as a very second-rate ent.i.ty, dependent on a new rising star."

The a.s.sa.s.sin, however, was not satisfied. "People can always adjust to innovations," he said. "You can't stop progress. What about the Industrial Revolution in England in the nineteenth century, or the way that three quarters of the world jumped straight out of feudal economies into the atomic age in the fifty years after World War Two? Or the Communications Revolution across the West? They all caused problems in their time, but people learned to live with the changes, and ended up better off as a result."

"But those things take time, Hadley," Barling answered. "You're right-people can adjust to anything, given time." He made an imploring gesture in the air again. "But that was the one thing the Federation hotheads weren't prepared to allow. They didn't need it. Martian society was small and flexible. Mars could have absorbed the new technology and thrived within a generation; Earth couldn't. Relatively speaking, Earth would have been thrown back into the Dark Ages overnight.

"Fortunately, some of the more levelheaded scientists around at the time, including Brozlan here, talked them out of it. They argued that Earth would have gone all the way to unleashing an all-out interplanetary war rather than let it happen. With the balance of things as it was then, Mars wouldn't have lasted a week." The colonel scowled. "We would have, too," he added with a growl.

Brozlan went on. "For a long time we developed the duplication process in secret, striving to improve its resolution further. After ten years or so, we reached a point where we could consider seriously an experiment that we had conceived right at the beginning-to produce an a.n.a.log of a living organism!"

"How about that, Hadley?" the colonel inquired quietly. "Interesting?"

The a.s.sa.s.sin stared back at the scientists in mute incredulity. n.o.body spoke for a long time.

"That's preposterous . . ." the a.s.sa.s.sin whispered, but the expression on Brozlan's face stifled any further words.

The professor nodded his head solemnly. "We refined the process so much, you see, that we could duplicate not only the spatial arrangement of the molecules in an organism, but also the patterns of electrical activity in its nervous system. We could reproduce, in the copy, all the behavioral habits and memorized information that had been acquired in the lifetime of the original-in other words, all those phenomena which in higher forms of life we term 'intelligence' and 'memory.' We could create an a.n.a.log of a living organism," Brozlan continued, "that was itself living! The a.n.a.logs that we created were indistinguishable from the originals by any test that we could devise. We produced a.n.a.log rats that could readily negotiate a maze that their originals had needed weeks of effort to learn . . . a.n.a.log dogs that exhibited the same reflexes that we had conditioned into their originals. From the data collected in such experiments, it soon became obvious that there was no reason why the same thing would not work with a human being."

Impossible thoughts that were already forming in the a.s.sa.s.sin's head focused suddenly into clarity. His eyes had frozen into a stunned stare directed straight at the figure seated at the foot of his bed. Before he could form any words, the colonel spoke again.

"Think about that, Hadley! You can put a person through a harmless scanning process and derive a code that specifies everything about him uniquely-physically and mentally. You can store that code away in a computer, and then use it to generate an identical a.n.a.log of him. But why stop at one? You could make as many as you like! If what we talked about before was alarming, then what about this?"

He allowed a few seconds for his words to sink in, then went on. "They had some brilliant brains on Mars all right. But suddenly there was no reason why they should have to be content with just some; now they could ma.s.s-produce them!" Barling rested his hands on the back of his chair and leaned forward to peer at the a.s.sa.s.sin intently. "What could have been achieved in the twentieth century with a thousand Albert Einsteins?

"How would you fight a war with an enemy that can store his army away in a data bank and simply re-create it every time you wipe it out? Come to that, why should he wait until you'd wiped it out at all?

He could make sure you didn't by making his army twice as big to start with . . . or ten times as big . . .

or any number you like. What sort of strategy would make sense any more? It all gets crazy.

"Or what about life-insurance companies? Instead of paying out a cash benefit to compensate the bereaved for losing somebody, they could offer an a.n.a.log to replace him. What kind of premium would they charge for that service?"

The a.s.sa.s.sin gaped from Barling to Brozlan and back again as he shrugged to keep pace with it all. This was too much.

"I don't believe all this," he protested. "It's some kind of trick."

"It most certainly is not, I a.s.sure you," Barling replied evenly. He pointed toward Brozlan. "Isn't that enough proof for you?"

The a.s.sa.s.sin followed the colonel's finger with his eyes and subsided back into silence.

"The things that Colonel Barling has just mentioned are just examples," Brozlan said. "It takes little imagination to realize what chaos could be let loose. The whole of civilized living as we know it would be turned upside down."

"Yes, exactly," Barling agreed.

"And consider this, Hadley-the code that controls the duplication process can be transmitted from anywhere to anywhere by ordinary telecommunications methods. Hence, the part of the machine that scans the original and the part that manufactures the a.n.a.log don't have to be in the same place. You could send anybody anywhere, instantly! It would be the old science-fiction dream come true, but with a difference-you'd still be left with the original at the sending end." He paused and took in the a.s.sa.s.sin's amazement.

"I a.s.sure you I'm not joking, Hadley. Never mind economic problems now. How would you cope with the social, moral, and administrative anarchy that would follow if this kind of thing ever got loose? How could anybody stay sane in a world that was proliferating dozens of everybody? That's not technical progress, it's an explosion!" He paused and looked down.

The other, still stupefied, shook his head weakly. "I am a Martian," he said. "You can't stop things like that, explosion or not. Man will always find answers. It's his nature."

"Oh, we can think of answers," the Englishman returned breezily. "Take that instant travel thing I just mentioned, for example. It would be an ideal way to send somebody to Mars or somewhere in a couple of seconds flat . . . if it weren't for the fact that you'd be stuck with two of him afterward-one here and one there. And things would get even worse if the one there decided to come back again the same way.

So, why not simply arrange for the transmitting end to destroy the original? After all, the effect as far as the rest of the universe was concerned would be that he just 'went' from here to there, wouldn't it?"

The a.s.sa.s.sin shrugged. "Perhaps."

The colonel rubbed the palms of his hands together and smiled faintly. "Ah . . . But that would surely be murder, Hadley," he replied. "Our legal and moral system wouldn't allow it. Let me ill.u.s.trate the point by asking a simple question. Suppose I were to say that we were going to send you through a system like that, and that in the very near future you were going to walk out of the receiving end in, say, Paris. Now, how would you feel about the idea? Would you be happy about it?" He paused and watched the change in expression on the a.s.sa.s.sin's face. "Mmm . . . no . . . I thought not. The fact that another individual who happened to look and think like you had come into existence somewhere else wouldn't really be of interest, would it? You would still be dead. You can't really accept that there'd be any sense of continuity with your a.n.a.log, can you? It just feels wrong-true?"

Again the a.s.sa.s.sin did not reply, but the look in his eyes was enough. Barling nodded but still took the point further. "See, it wouldn't work. But suppose I were to argue that all we would have done would be to speed up slightly something that happens naturally anyway. Every molecule in your body will be replaced eventually by the normal processes of cell regeneration; the Hadley that will exist in six months'

time won't contain one atom of the person lying in that bed right now. So why should you feel any less of a sense of continuity with your synthetic a.n.a.log than you feel with the 'natural a.n.a.log' that will be you six months from now? Logically there is no difference. The two processes are the same, but one takes a little longer than the other." The colonel allowed the proposition time to register, then suggested: "But nevertheless something's wrong. The argument wouldn't convince you-right?"

"But one day maybe-" the a.s.sa.s.sin began, but Barling cut him off.

"Ah-one day, Hadley, perhaps . . . but that's another matter. As you say, man will always find answers. Maybe some day things like that might be accepted as perfectly normal-as normal as embryonic genetic adjustments or artificially grown limbs seem to us today. Maybe someday we'll populate another star system by simply beaming the information to generate a few thousand a.n.a.logs out to receiving equipment that has already been sent on ahead. Maybe someday we'll send people around the world as easily as we send messages through the infonet. It might become standard practice to back everybody up in data banks so that n.o.body need be permanently lost at all." Barling spread his arms appealingly. "But not today, Hadley-not in our lifetime. Good G.o.d, man, it will take fifty years at least just to plan how to use that kind of thing intelligently. We couldn't just let it loose overnight without any preparation at all."

"You see, that is precisely what the Federation was proposing to do," Brozlan supplied, sitting forward in his chair. "We managed to talk them out of doing anything rash the first time, but after this there was no way of making them listen. Mars was about to break free and find its own destiny. They saw themselves as potential G.o.ds-able to create at will and, in a sense, immortal. None of Earth's traditional advantages mattered any more: its military superiority, economic strength, huge population, and abundance of resources . . . all of them counted for nothing. Mars would begin a new era of civilization, and Earth would pale into insignificance in its shadow."

"And you-a Martian-didn't want this?" The a.s.sa.s.sin seemed unable to comprehend.

Brozlan shook his head slowly. "I was older by then. I saw the future not in terms of Earth or Mars, but of mankind. I and many of my colleagues decided that if, by this new knowledge that we had discovered, man was to elevate himself to G.o.dliness, then he would do so united as one race. This new power would not be used for something that would have amounted to war. We agreed, therefore, that, before the imbalance became any greater, we would bring the new sciences to Earth."

"And so you defected," the a.s.sa.s.sin completed for him, nodding.

Brozlan hesitated for an unnaturally long time before replying. "Yes and no," he said at last. The a.s.sa.s.sin looked puzzled.

"By that time I was forced to work under conditions of intense and constant surveillance by Federation security. Straightforward defection would have been impossible. So . . ." He took a deep breath. ". . .