by Nancy Kress
Of course, Ann had told him that she didn’t think the shared-reality mechanism was genetic. Both she and the earlier research team had had no trouble obtaining DNA samples from hair, blood, shed skin. The analyzers had reported only minor variations in a composite World genome from a composite human one: less than .005 percent. Just enough, Ann told David, to account for neckfur, skull ridges, other minor evolutionary differences. No, she’d admitted, she couldn’t be positive that shared reality wasn’t somehow scattered among those differences, or hidden in the junk DNA carried so copiously by both races. Being positive would require years more experimentation with equipment she didn’t have. But she was pretty sure the differences were not genetic. Worlders were, after all, so fully compatible with humans that theoretically they could interbreed with fertile offspring. The differences were all superficial, and the DNA analyses were the closest match found yet among the kissing-cousin races that had, at one point, been moved light-years apart.
But, David had persisted, without further experimentation, she couldn’t be positive. He said it so often that even patient Ann had finally snapped, “No! I can’t be positive it’s not genetic! And yes, if it is, it could in theory be spliced into human DNA! Now will you please stop pestering me?”
No more war. And the enormous economic costs of war diverted to peaceful pursuits, the real pursuits, of learning and loving and raising children (seventeen percent of children on Terra still died from disease, violence, or starvation).
Already it was happening, in a way, with Bonnie and Ben! The twins had taken to life on World with the same enthusiasm as David. Just today, they had toddled into the corner where David was telling stories, talking to the World six-year-olds to teach them English. The six-year-olds were actually more like three-and-a-half-year-olds in Earth years, of course; World’s year included 213 rotations of the planet, each a little more than twenty-four hours. The children were adorable, sitting on their low kidney-shaped pillows with their tiny bald heads craning toward his picture screen, their hands cutting the air in excited curves. The story was David’s own adaptation of “Peter Rabbit.” Anything with flowers in it was always a success.
“ … and so Peter Pek Freb went again into Pek McGregor’s garden and ate a flower!”
Three pairs of dark eyes went wide at such wickedness.
Into this literary moment Ben and Bonnie crashed, still unsteady walking, twice as large as Nafret and Uvi and Grenol. Ben gurgled and reached toward the carved wooden freb on David’s lap. The toddler tripped and fell onto Uvi, his elbow giving her head a nasty crack. She wailed.
Ben thought it was a game. He laughed.
Nafret and Grenol had immediately starting stroking the crying Uvi, soothing and comforting. But at Ben’s laugh, Nafret looked up, frowning. He looked again at Uvi, again at Ben, and he put his hand to the side of his head. His small mouth puckered.
The World tutor, Colert Gamolin, was instantly beside Nafret. He squatted down to the child’s height and waited intently. Nafret continued to gaze from Ben to Uvi; tears formed in his eyes. Gamolin said gently, “Is the soil good today, Nafret?”
“My head hurts.”
A grin spread across Gamolin’s face: huge, delighted, relieved. He picked up Nafret and carried him outside, but not before directing his grin at David. Meanwhile, a nanny held Uvi, who had mostly stopped crying. David watched Ben.
The little boy looked puzzled. He stared at the sobbing Uvi in the nanny’s lap. Then he picked up a toy from the floor, a soft stuffed cloud the children all liked, and lurched over to Uvi. Wordlessly, seriously, he held the toy out to her.
It was not the same, David knew. Human children as young as six months often developed empathy for another child’s distress. Ben’s sweet consoling gesture had none of the biological force of little Nafret’s distress, and Ben could, unfortunately, quite easily be trained out of his empathy for the Other, and not so easily trained to keep it. But it was evidence. Evidence that the same evolutionary mechanism that existed in Worlders had at least a rudimentary hold in Terrans. If the basics were there, it would be even easier to genetically engineer such a closely related evolutionary path.
“No,” Ann Sikorski had said, patience regained after the genetics argument. “Shared reality isn’t a logical evolutionary strategy, David. It just isn’t. I’ve run the computer simulations twice, according to the Dawkins equations, and that kind of rigid altruism can’t overrun genetic selfishness as a winning strategy.”
“But on World it has,” David pointed out, irrefutably.
“I know,” Ann said. She pushed her lovely long hair back from her face, looking troubled. “For one thing, there apparently was no real competition from a strategy of genetic selfishness, although I don’t know why. Not yet. On every other planet, the sentients are competitive. There’s something else going on here, but I don’t know what. Not yet, anyway.”
Biologists. Locked into their computer simulations, their evolutionary mathematics. David knew what was going on here. In fact, it was the same thing that already went on among enlightened humans, those who took the Discipline seriously, with its moral obligation to establish the optimum brain chemistry for the day’s tasks. Neurotechnology was a responsibility to oneself and to others, a taking seriously of one’s potential to be the best and most effective person possible. Weren’t neurotechnology, genetic engineering, and World’s shared reality all really aspects of the same thing: biological tools to make the best possible society?
Yes. They were.
David went outside. Nafret and Gamolin were walking around the flower beds, reciting the names of various blossoms. Pajalib, rafirib, allabenirib. Gamolin still wore his exalted expression, and he held the little boy’s hand with increased tenderness. When the flower lesson was finished, the tutor sent Nafret back inside and turned to David.
“That is the first sign I have seen in Nafret, Pek Allen. I must tell Pek Voratur immediately. His son is becoming real.”
“All flowers smell of sweetness and joy,” David answered ritually. He couldn’t help smiling. Gamolin’s pleasure was infectious. But this was also a good opportunity to obtain information. “Is Nafret the usual age for becoming real on World?”
“He is slightly early.” Gamolin’s eyes widened. “Why? At what age do human children begin?”
“Later,” Allen said. It was important to protect Bonnie and Ben. “About nine years old.” That would be five years old on World.
“So late!”
“Yes. But Pek Gamolin, I would ask another question. If a child here should prove unreal … what is the World procedure?”
Gamolin’s radiant smile faded. After a moment he said. “We try for as little pain as possible. In the past … but our distant ancestors could not smell flowers that had not yet grown, you know. Now we cut the throat. A quick, very sharp knife, when the not-child is asleep. They never suffer. And on Terra?”
David managed calm. “A different procedure. We … we use potions.” Not a lie. The children of Earth with uncorrectable brain disorders were frequently given opiates. Although not to kill them. “May I ask what proportion of your offspring are … not-children?”
“Oh, very few,” Gamolin said, cheerful again. “In fact, it is quite ridiculous how parents worry about it, when the chances are so small. Especially among the rich like Pek Voratur. A separate crelm house for those not yet declared real by the priests … it’s silly, really. And I suspect that eventually reality will shift and crelm houses will disappear. Do the rich on Terra have them?”
“No.”
“Well, there, you see. Your reality shifts are ahead of ours. Not that I didn’t already know that from the Terran bicycles Pek Bazargan has given the household! What magnificent machines! Mine has exactly the curves of bleriodib, and it goes much faster than any bicycle I’ve ever owned.”
“I’m glad you like it,” David said. He didn’t know what bleriodib were, and his usual keen interest in the language seemed to
be missing today.
“I go now to inform Pek Voratur of Nafret’s headpain,” Gamolin said. “The priests will want to begin planning the ceremony. Till our flowers bloom together.”
“Till our flowers bloom together,” David said.
Now—irony, irony—he had a headache. Although it shouldn’t affect him like this. He was an anthropologist. He knew that all societies had undesirable aspects, and many, even ones as culturally advanced as World, destroyed damaged infants. A six-year-old, however, was not an infant. If humans could be genetically engineered to feel physical distress in the presence of unshared reality, would they, too, destroy their own children? Was that the necessary price of peace?
No. It didn’t have to be. Human geneticists, unlike World evolution, didn’t have to rely on the harshness of natural selection, nor on the vagaries of genetic chance. They could tinker with the basic gene patterns, find a way around the problem of the severely brain-damaged. It might lie in other genes besides the ones for the shared-reality mechanism. It-might be something easily modified.
And maybe the difficulty wasn’t even genetic! Maybe it was just cultural. The priests that must declare little Nafret “real”—they held the power of life and death. And wasn’t that a common pattern in human history! Greedy religious orders, wanting to keep power for themselves, using custom and myth and threats and murder to keep the people in line and then making them believe it was all for their own good so they wouldn’t challenge the supremacy of the priesthood. Some political thinker of a few centuries ago had nailed it exactly: “Religion is the opiate of the people.”
Well, if the killing of children was cultural, not biological, then it wouldn’t even be a component of the human genetic adoption of “shared reality.” So why was he, David Allen, feeling so upset about it?
That was the real problem, wasn’t it? Not with the genetics, but with him. He was feeling pessimistic about a minor difficulty when he ought to feel jubilant about a major insight. Tomorrow he would make a significant adjustment to his Discipline. The implications of this were too big for petty mental stumblings.
He might have the means to save humanity from itself.
Whistling, he walked the beautiful gardens of the Voratur household, feeling hope bloom in him like a flower.
SIX
RAFKIT SELOE
Enli stood miserably before Pek Nagredil in his small cramped office in the government center. Outside the arched window, chill rain fell steadily on the high arches and curving courtyards of Rafkit Seloe.
“Pek Brimmidin, Reality and Atonement had hoped for more from you. Much more,” Pek Nagredil said.
“I know,” Enli said.
“You have a favored position in the Voratur household—direct assistant to one of the Terrans! You should have acquired all types of useful information. But what do you tell me? The Terrans expel disgusting bodily fluids from their noses. Their bladders empty on an average of six point four times daily. They do not have sex—we know that isn’t true, from the Terrans who came previously. They—”
“What I said was that these Terrans make no sexual displays,” Enli said wretchedly. Rain dripped off her clothing, her neckfur, her fingers, making puddles on the government floor.
“Don’t interrupt. You tell me that the Terrans work steadily on plants and animals, like healers. That they are probably—‘probably’!—observing World people whenever they can. That the Terran children play with World children in the Voratur crelm house. And that they have given flower seeds for ‘rosib’ to Pek Voratur, which the whole world already knows.”
“I—” .
“The only new piece of information you have told me is that Pek Bazargan asked to take a picture of Pek Voratur’s s brain inside his head, and that Pek Voratur naturally refused.”
“They speak their strange Terran words when they’re alone,” Enli said. “Even though I listen, I can’t understand.”
“Then you had better find a way of learning Terran, or observing actions instead of speech. This is a pathetic informant report for five tendays.”
“I’m sorry. I—”
“You should be able to learn Terran words. The informant assigned to the previous Terrans—an informant who, Pek Brimmidin, is now real!-learned the language. At least enough to be able to understand such overhearings as ‘We will return for the manufactured item.’ Don’t you think you can do at least as well as that? You are intelligent, after all.”
“But I—”
“You may go, Pek Brimmidin.”
“But—”
“You may go.”
Not even a polite wish for her future success. Enli turned and dripped her way outside. She mounted her wet bicycle and started back to Gofkit Jemloe through the cold rain.
“Please, Pek Sikorski …” Enli began.
“Yes, Enli? What is it?”
“Would you teach me to speak your words?”
Pek Sikorski looked surprised. Back at Gofkit Jemloe, dried off and rested, Enli had regained her confidence. Hadn’t she succeeded at every other informant job? She could do whatever was necessary to succeed at this one, too.
Pek Sikorski said, “Why do you want to learn our words, Enli?” She did not speak as well as Pek Bazargan, and her accent was strange. Also, it looked to Enli as if Pek Sikorski was developing a flower sickness. Her nose dripped a little and her eyes had begun to turn red and swell. Trifalitib were just coming into bloom; Pek Sikorski was probably flower sick from that. Tabor had had it, a shame to him every time the lacy flowers came into season … . No, don’t think about Tabor.
The odd thing was that Pek Sikorski didn’t seem ashamed to have a flower sickness. She wasn’t hiding in her room as rich women did, or keeping her head bent in atonement as working people did, or making ritual apologies to a trifalitib bed for her miserable failure to appreciate their glorious gift. She hadn’t even braided her neckfur—headfur—in atonement braids. Her headfur looked the same as always, today caught on top of her skull in a shining loop.
Enli said, “I want to learn your words because I like learning things.” Only yesterday Pek Sikorski had praised Enli for her neat job of preparing pieces of dead worm for the strange Terran machine, “gene sequencer.” There were a number of these odd machines, all looking like sealed metal boxes with mouths that swallowed bits of dead things and never gave them back.
Pek Sikorski smiled, sneezed, and wiped her nose. She didn’t even make the sign of atonement. “Well, Enli, I’ll be glad to teach you Terran. Shall we start now?”
“Yes, please.” Didn’t the woman even care that she was offending a flower? What was wrong with these people?
“Let’s start with the objects in this room, shall we? This is a table.”
“Table,” Enli repeated, tasting the strange word. Pressure began to bore between her eyes, but she was taking so many of the government pills that the pressure was small and far away. There was no other way that she could get through the day with these awful Terrans. Enli might not have had many facts to report to Pek Nagredil, but she had impressions.
“Floor,” Pek Sikorski said, stooping to touch the floor. She sneezed again, without bowing her head.
“Floor, floor, floor,” Enli said, not looking at her.
“Wall.”
“Wall, wall, wall. Floor, floor, floor. Table, table, table.”
“Good. Here’s an important one for you: flower.” And Pek Sikorski actually touched a trifalit blossom from the bouquet on her table. While she had trifalit flower sickness!
Enli felt sick herself. So the Terrans weren’t real after all. No one who was real could commit a sacrilege like that. Pek Sikorski should cry out with pain, crumple to the floor … she did no such thing. She greeted Pek Bazargan, who had just entered through the door.
“Good morning, Ann, Enli … May your gardens bloom always. Ann, you don’t look too good. Allergy?” The last word was in their speech.
“Yes, it feels so,” Pek Sikorski s
aid ruefully, in World. “I haven’t gotten around to taking an antihistamine yet. Enli asked to learn English, and we’re having a lesson.”
“Good,” Pek Bazargan said, smiling at Enli. “May your flowers bloom in this endeavor. But, Ann, take that antihistamine now.” His last sentence had a peculiar intensity.
Pek Sikorski said, “Oh. Taboo?” Another weird Terran word.
“Very much so.”
“Excuse me.” She left the workroom.
Pek Bazargan strolled toward Enli’s table and inspected her work. “Very nice, Enli. I’m sure you’re a great help to Ann.”
“Thank you,” Enli said.
“I saw you ride in yesterday on your bicycle, in the rain. You must have got very wet, riding on such a day.”
“Yes,” Enli said cautiously. Did he have some way, some unreal Terran way, of knowing where she’d gone? Was he an informant, too?
“I’d like to ask you a question, if I may. Your bicycle, like everyone else’s, has a lock on it. Now, shared reality shifts over time, as we know, and I am very interested in that. So my question may sound strange, but please remember that shared reality on Terra, while of course shared, may have shifted a bit from World. Why do bicycles have locks, when stealing one would surely violate shared reality?”
Enli made her hands work steadily on the worm pieces. Here it was, then. Even Pek Nagredil would agree this was significant information. Yes, shared reality shifted, but not so much that it could lead to ignorance of such a basic concept. Pek Bazargan must be unreal to even ask it. And if he had asked it of anyone not on the government pills, it would have revealed such an unreality that the result would be smashing headpain … But he had asked it of Enli. Should she pretend pain? No, he didn’t know the difference.
She said, as quietly as her hammering heart would allow, “Stealing does not violate shared reality. People will always take things they see and want and do not already have. That is just Worlder nature, and everyone knows it. It’s shared.”
“Ah,” Pek Bazargan said, and there was something intense in his strange pale Terran eyes that Enli suddenly didn’t like.