Yes, Hanno thought, the job will beggar the Pyramids. And after a while the Pharaohs stopped building pyramids. It was too expensive. Nobody wanted it any more.
Aloud, with a stiff smile: “I am aware of everything you’ve told me, at least in a general way. I’m also aware that today’s world can do the job without imposing hardship on anyone. Please don’t poor-mouth me. You must see some merit in my idea, or we wouldn’t be having this meeting.”
“You Survivors are unique,” murmured the Artist. “To this day, you keep a certain appeal, and a certain special interest for those who care about whence we came.”
“And where we may be going!” Hanno exclaimed. “I’m talking about the future, all humanity’s. Earth and Sol won’t hist forever. We can make our race immortal.”
“Humankind will deal with geological problems when they arise,” the Astronomer said. “They won’t for several billion years.”
Hanno refrained from saying: I think anything that might be called human will be long extinct by then, here. Death, or transfiguration? I don’t know. To me, it hardly matters which.
“Any idea of large-scale interstellar colonization is ludicrous,” declared the Economist.
“If it could be done,” said the Astronomer, “it would have been done already, and we would know about it.”
Yes, I’ve heard the argument, over and over, from the twentieth century onward. If the Others exist, where are They? Why have Their exploring robots, at least, never visited Earth? We ourselves, we’re interested enough to send follow-ups to those primitive sapients we’ve found. What little we’ve learned thus far has touched our thinking, our arts, our spirits in subtle ways—if nothing else, as much as Africa touched Europe when the white man opened it up. If only life and awareness weren’t so seldom, so incidental or accidental. I think we’d be out there today, seeking, had the loneliness not reached in to freeze us.
Nevertheless, They exist!
“We must be patient,” the Astronomer went on. “It seems clear that They are. In due course, robots will get there; or we may establish direct communication earlier.”
Across light-centuries- That long between question and answer.
“We don’t know what They are like,” Hanno said. “What the x many different Theys are like. You’ve read the written proposal I submitted. Haven’t you? I went over each of the old arguments. They get down to simply this, that we do not know. What we do know is what we are capable of.”
“The limits of feasibility are contained within the limits of possibility,” declared the Economist.
“Yes, we have studied your report,” the Sociologist said. “The reasons you give for mounting the enterprise are logically inadequate. True, some thousands of individuals believe they would like to go. They feel frustrated, bewildered, out of place, confined, or otherwise discontented. They dream of a fresh start on a fresh world. Most of them are immature and will outgrow it. Most of the rest are visionaries who would retreat, shocked, if offered the opportunity in reality. You are left with perhaps a few score, for whose emotional convenience you want the entire society to pay a high share-cost.”
“They’re the ones that matter.”
“Do they, when they are so selfish that they will actually subject their descendants—for they will reproduce if they live—to the hazards and deprivations?”
Hanno’s grin was stark. “All parents have always made that kind of decision. It’s in the nature of things. Would you deny your race the opportunities, discoveries, whole new ways of thinking and working and living, that this civilization forecloses?”
“Your point is not ill taken,” said the Psychologist. “Still, you must agree that success is not guaranteed. On the contrary, you would take a rather wild gamble. It is not yet proven that any of the half-score planets thus far found which seem to have Earthlike environments and biochemistries, is not a long-range death trap.”
“We could look farther if need be. We’ve got the tune. What we need is something worth doing with it.”
“You would indeed find marvels,” said the Artist. “Perhaps you could understand them and convey them back to us in fashions that no robot is, quite able to.”
Hanno nodded. “I have a notion that intelligent life can only communicate fully with its own kind. Maybe I’m wrong, but how can we be certain before we’ve tried? We build our limitations and the limitations of our knowledge into our machines and their programs. Yes, they learn, adapt, modify themselves according to experience; the best of them think; but it’s always along machine lines. What do we know about experiences they can’t handle? Maybe scientific theory is complete, maybe not; but in any case it’s a mighty big universe yonder. Much too big and full for us to predict. We need more than one breed of explorer.”
The Engineer frowned. “So your petition maintains. Did you imagine its contentions are new? They have been brought up again and again, to be rejected as insufficient. The probability of success, and the value of any success that might be had, are too slight in relation to cost.”
Hanno noticed himself lean forward. It seemed a strange act in this disembodied conversation. “I did not bring up my new argument,” he told them. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. But ... the situation has changed. You’re dealing with us now, the Survivors. You said it, we are unique. We still have our special prestige, mystique, fallowings—nothing great, no, but we well know how to use such things. I in particular recall ways of raising holy hell with the powers that be. I got quite good at it, back in ancient times.
“Oh, yes, a gadfly. You can pretend to ignore us. If need be, you can destroy us. But that will cost you. We’ll leave troublesome questions behind in many minds. They won’t fade, because you’ve abolished death and databases don’t forget. You’ve had your world running so smoothly for so long that you may think the system is stable. It isn’t. Nothing human ever was. Read your history.” The sweep and violence of it, the hidden reefs on which empires foundered with their pride and dreams and gods.
The Psychologist spoke in steely imperturbability: “It is true that sociodynamics is, mathematically, chaotic.”
“I don’t want to threaten you,” Hanno urged quickly. “In fact, I’d fear the outcome too. It might be small, but it might be enormous. Instead—“ he fashioned a laugh— “malcontents traditionally were a favorite export of governments. And this will be something adventurous, romantic, in an age when adventure and romance are almost gone except for electronic shadow shows. People will enjoy it, support it... long enough for the ship to get under way. You’ll find the kudos for yourselves quite useful in whatever else you want to do. Afterward—“ He spread his palms. “Who knows? Maybe a flat failure. But maybe an opening to everywhere.”
Silence thrummed.
The calm of the Administrator struck Hanno harder than any physical blow. “We have anticipated this, too, from you. The factors have been weighed. The decision is positive. The ship shall be launched.”
Like that? In this single instant, victory?
Well, but the computers can have given it thousands of years’ worth of human thinking time while I talked.
O Columbus!
“There are conditions,” tolled through his hearing. “Suspended animation or no, the mass of fifty or more colonists, with supplies and equipment, is excessive, when the odds are so poor. You eight Survivors must go alone. Of course, you will have a complement of robots, up to and including the intelligent and versatile but subservient, personalityless type, toward which you can develop no hostility. You will have such other materiel as appears called for. If your venture prospers, larger numbers may someday follow in slower carriers. We expect you will agree that this is reasonable.”
“Yes—“ And the symbolism of it, uh-huh, shrewd. My God, I’ll be glad to get out from under a system that calculates everything.
But I should not be ungrateful, should I? “You’re very generous. You always have been, to us. Thank you, thank you.”
“Thank society. You think in terms of kings, but personal power is obsolete.”
True, I suppose. As obsolete as the personal soul.
“Furthermore,” the Administrator continued, “you shall not go to the planet suggested in your report. It does lie less than fifty light-years hence, but distance differences on that order of magnitude are comparatively unimportant when relativistic travel speeds are available. It is the best known of the terrestroid candidates, therefore the most promising for settlement. However, other considerations enter. You spoke of exploration. Very well, you shall explore.
