THE BICENTENNIAL MAN

by Isaac Asimov

  “Surely you don’t expect us to dismantle--”

  “You won’t have to. Don’t you see? Join us in explaining that Luna City is essential, that space exploration is the hope of mankind; that you will wait, retrench, if necessary.”

  Bergen looked at his wife and raised his eyebrows. She shook her head angrily. Bergen said, “You have a rather romantic view of the PPC, I think. Even if I made noble, self-sacrificing speeches, who’s to say they would listen? There’s a great deal more involved in the matter of Ocean-Deep than my opinion and my statements. There are economic considerations and public feeling. Why don’t you relax, Mr. Demerest? Luna City won’t come to an end. You’ll receive funds, I’m sure of it. I tell you, I’m sure of it. Now let’s break this up”

  “No, I’ve got to convince you one way or another that I’m serious. If necessary, Ocean-Deep must come to a halt unless the PPC can supply ample funds for both.”

  Bergen said, “Is this some sort of official mission, Mr. Demerest? Are you speaking for Luna City officially, or just for yourself?”

  “Just for myself, but maybe that’s enough, Mr. Bergen.”

  “I don’t think it is. I’m sorry, but this is turning out to be unpleasant. I suggest that, after all, you had better return Topside on the first available ‘scaphe.”

  “Not yet! Not yet!” Demerest looked about wildly, then rose unsteadily and put his back against the wall. He was a little too tall for the room and he became conscious of life receding. One more step and he would have gone too far to back out.

  He had told them back on the Moon that there would be no use talking, no use negotiating. It was dog-eat-dog for the available funds and Luna City’s destiny must not be aborted; not for Ocean-Deep; not -for Earth; no, not for all of Earth, since mankind and the Universe came even before the Earth. Man must outgrow his womb and

  Demerest could hear his own ragged breathing and the inner turmoil of his whirling thoughts. The other two were looking at him with what seemed concern. Annette rose and said, “Are you ill, Mr. Demerest?”

  “I am not ill. Sit down. I’m a safety engineer and I want to teach you about safety. Sit down, Mrs. Bergen.”

  “Sit down, Annette,” said Bergen. “I’ll take care of him.” He rose and took a step forward.

  But Demerest said, “No. Don’t you move either. I have something right here. You’re too naive concerning human dangers, Mr. Bergen. You guard against the sea and against mechanical failure and you don’t search your human visitors, do you? I have a weapon, Bergen.”

  Now that it was out and he had taken the final step, from which there was no returning, for he was now dead whatever he did, he was quite calm.

  Annette said, “Oh, John,” and grasped her husband’s arm. “He’s--”

  Bergen stepped in front of her. “A weapon? Is that what that thing is? Now slowly, Demerest, slowly. There’s nothing to get hot over. If you want to talk, we will talk. What is that?”

  “Nothing dramatic. A portable laser beam.”

  “But what do you want to do with it?”

  “Destroy Ocean-Deep.”

  “But you can’t, Demerest. You know you can’t. There’s only so much energy you can pack into your fist and any laser you can hold can’t pump enough heat to penetrate the walls.”

  “I know that. This packs more energy than you think. It’s Moon-made and there are some advantages to manufacturing the energy unit in a vacuum. But you’re right. Even so, it’s designed only for small jobs and requires frequent recharging. So I don’t intend to try to cut through a foot-plus of alloy steel. ...But it will do the job indirectly. For one thing, it will keep you two quiet. There’s enough energy in my fist to kill two people.”

  “You wouldn’t kill us,” said Bergen evenly. “You have no reason.”

  “If by that,” said Demerest, “you imply that I am an unreasoning being to be somehow made to understand my madness, forget it. I have every reason to kill you and I will kill you. By laser beam if I have to, though I would rather not.” .

  “What good will killing us do you? Make me understand. Is it that I have refused to sacrifice Ocean-Deep funds? I couldn’t do anything else. I’m not really the one to make the decision. And if you kill me, that won’t help you force the decision in your direction, will it? In fact, quite the contrary. If a Moon-man is a murderer, how will that reflect on Luna City? Consider human emotions on Earth.”

  There was just an edge of shrillness in Annette’s voice as she joined in. “Don’t you see there will be people who will say that Solar radiation on the Moon has dangerous effects? That the genetic engineering which has reorganized your bones and muscles has affected mental stability? Consider the word ‘lunatic,’ Mr. Demerest. Men once believed the Moon brought madness.”

  “I am not mad, Mrs. Bergen.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Bergen, following his wife’s lead smoothly. “Men will say that you were; that all Moon-men are; and Luna City will be closed down and the Moon itself closed to all further exploration, perhaps forever. Is that what you want?”

  “That might happen if they thought I killed you, but they won’t. It will be an accident.” With his left elbow, Demerest broke the plastic that covered the manual controls.

  “I know units of this sort,” he said. “I know exactly how it works. Logically, breaking that plastic should set up a warning flash--after all, it might be broken by accident--and then someone would be here to investigate, or, better yet, the controls should lock until deliberately released to make sure the break w~ not merely accidental.”

  He paused, then said, “But I’m sure no one will come; that no warning has taken place. Your manual system is not failsafe because in your heart you were sure it would never be used.”

  “What do you plan to do?” said Bergen.

  He was tense and Demerest watched his knees carefully, and said, “If you try to jump toward me, I’ll shoot at once, and then keep right on with what I’m doing.”

  “I think maybe you’re giving me nothing to lose.”

  “You’ll lose time. Let me go right on without interference and you’ll have some minutes to keep on talking. You may even be able to talk me out of it. There’s my proposal. Don’t interfere with me and I will give you your chance to argue.”

  “But what do you plan to do?”

  “This,” said Demerest. He did not have to look. His left hand snaked out and closed a contact. “The fusion unit will now pump heat into the air lock and the steam will empty it. It will take a few minutes. When it’s done, I’m sure one of those little red-glass buttons will light.”

  “Are you going to--”

  Demerest said, “Why do you ask? You know that I must be intending, having gone this far, to Rood Ocean-Deep?”

  “But why? Damn it, why?”

  “Because it will be marked down as an accident. Because your safety record will be spoiled. Because it will be a complete catastrophe and will wipe you out. And PPC will then turn from you, and the glamor of Ocean-Deep will be gone. We will get the funds; we will continue. If I could bring that to pass in some other way, I would, but the needs of Luna City are the needs of mankind and those are paramount.”

  “You will die, too,” Annette managed to say.

  “Of course. Once I am forced to do something like this, would I want to live? I’m not a murderer.”

  “But you will be. If you flood this unit, you will flood all of Ocean-Deep and kill everyone in it--and doom those who are out in their subs to slower death. Fifty men and women --an unborn child--”

  “That is not my fault,” said Demerest, in clear pain. “I did not expect to find a pregnant woman here, but now that I have, I can’t stop because of that.”

  “But you must stop,” said Bergen. “Your plan won’t work unless what happens can be shown to be an accident. They’ll find you with a beam emitter in your hand and with the manual controls clearly tampered with. Do you think they won’t deduce the truth from that?�
�

  Demerest was feeling very tired. “Mr. Bergen, you sound desperate. Listen-When the outer door opens, water under a thousand atmospheres of pressure will enter. It will be a massive battering ram that will destroy and mangle everything in its path. The walls of the Ocean-Deep units will remain but everything inside will be twisted beyond recognition. Human beings will be mangled into shredded tissue and splintered bone and death will be instantaneous and unfelt. Even if I were to burn you to death with the laser there would be nothing left to show it had been done, so I won’t hesitate, you see. This manual unit will be smashed anyway; anything I can do will be erased by the water .”

  “But the beam emitter, the laser gun. Even damaged, it will be recognizable,” said Annette.

  “We use such things on the Moon, Mrs. Bergen. It is a common tool; it is the optical analogue of a jackknife. I could kill you with a jackknife, you know, but one would not deduce that a man carrying a jackknife, or even holding one with the blade open, was necessarily planning murder. He might be whittling. Besides, a Moon-made laser is not a projectile gun. It doesn’t have to withstand .an internal explosion. It is made of thin metal, mechanically weak. After it is smashed by the waterclap I doubt that it will make much sense as an object.”

  Demerest did not have to think to make these statements. He had worked them out within himself through months of self-debate back on the Moon.

  “In fact,” he went on, “how will the investigators ever know what happened in here? They will send ‘scaphes down to inspect what is left of Ocean-Deep, but how can they get inside without first pumping the water out? They will, in effect, have to build a new Ocean-Deep and that would take--how long? Perhaps, given public reluctance to waste money, they might never do it at all and content themselves with dropping a laurel wreath on the dead walls of the dead Ocean-Deep.”

  Bergen said, “The men on Luna City will know what you have done. Surely one of them will have a conscience. The truth will be known.”

  “One truth,” said Demerest, “is that I am not a fool. No one on Luna City knows what I planned to do or will suspect what I have done. They sent me down here to negotiate cooperation on the matter of financial grants. I was to argue and nothing more. There’s not even a laser-beam emitter missing up there. I put this one together myself out of scrapped parts. ...And it works. I’ve tested it.”

  Annette said slowly, “You haven’t thought it through. Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “I’ve thought it through. I know what I’m doing. ...And I know also that you are both conscious of the lit signal. I’m aware of it. The air lock is empty and time’s up, I’m afraid.”

  Rapidly, holding his beam emitter tensely high, he closed another contact. A circular part of the unit wall cracked into a thin crescent and rolled smoothly away.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Demerest saw the gaping darkness, but he did not look. A dankly salt vapor issued from it; a queer odor of dead steam. He even imagined he could: hear the flopping sound of the gathered water at the bottom of the lock.

  Demerest said, “In a rational manual unit, the outer door ought to be frozen shut now. With the inner door open, nothing ought to make the outer door open. I suspect, though, that the manuals were put together too quickly at first for that precaution to have been taken, and it was replaced too quickly for that precaution to have been added. And if I need further evidence of that, you wouldn’t be sitting there so tensely if you knew the outer door wouldn’t open. I need touch one more contact and the waterclap will come. We will feel nothing. “

  Annette said, “Don’t push it just yet. I have one more thing to say. You said we would have time to persuade you.”

  “While the water was being pushed out.”

  “Just let me say this. A minute. A minute. I said you didn’t know what you were doing. You don’t. You’re destroying the space program, the space program. There’s more to space than space.” Her voice had grown shrill.

  Demerest frowned. “What are you talking about? Make sense, or I’ll end it all. I’m tired. I’m frightened. I want it over.”

  Annette said, “You’re not in the inner councils of the PPC. Neither is my husband. But I am. Do you think because I am a woman that I’m secondary here? I’m not. You, Mr. Demerest, have your eyes fixed on Luna City only. My husband has his fixed on Ocean-Deep. Neither of you know anything.

  “Where do you expect to go, Mr. Demerest, if you had all the money you wanted? Mars? The asteroids? The satellites of the gas giants? These are all small worlds; all dry surfaces under a blank sky. It may be generations before we are ready to try for the stars and till then we’d have only pygmy real estate. Is that your ambition?

  “My husband’s ambition is no better. He dreams of pushing man’s habitat over the ocean Boor, a surface not much larger in the last analysis than the surface of the Moon and the other pygmy worlds. We of the PPC, on the other hand, want more than either of you, and if you push that button, Mr. Demerest, the greatest dream mankind has ever had will come to nothing.”

  Demerest found himself interested despite himself, but he said, “You’re just babbling.” It was possible, he knew, that somehow they had warned others in Ocean-Deep, that any moment someone would come to interrupt, someone would try to shoot him down. He was, however, staring at the only opening, and he had only to close one contact, without even looking, in a second’s movement.

  Annette said, “I’m not babbling. You know it took more than rocket ships to colonize the Moon. To make a successful colony possible, men had .to be altered genetically and adjusted to low gravity. You are a product of such genetic engineering.”

  “Well ?”

  “And might not genetic engineering also help men to greater gravitational pull? What is the largest planet of the Solar System, Mr. Demerest?”

  “Jupi--”

  “Yes, Jupiter. Eleven times the diameter of the Earth; forty times the diameter of the Moon. A surface a hundred and twenty times that of the Earth in area; sixteen hundred times that of the Moon. Conditions so different from anything we can encounter anywhere on the worlds the size of Earth or less that any scientist of any persuasion would give half his life for a chance to observe at close range.”

  “But Jupiter is an impossible target.”

  “Indeed?” said Annette, and even managed a faint smile. “As impossible as flying? Why is it impossible? Genetic engineering could design men with stronger and denser bones, stronger and more compact muscles. The same principles that enclose Luna City against the vacuum and Ocean-Deep against the sea can also enclose the future Jupiter-Deep against its ammoniated surroundings.”

  “The gravitational field--”

  “Can be negotiated by nuclear-powered ships that are now on the drawing board. You don’t know that but I do.”

  “We’re not even sure about the depth of the atmosphere. The pressures--”

  “The pressures! The pressures! Mr. Demerest, look about you. Why do you suppose Ocean-Deep was really built? To exploit the ocean? The settlements on the continental shelf are doing that quite adequately. To gain knowledge of the deep-sea bottom? We could do that by ‘scaphe easily and we could then have spared the hundred billion dollars invested in Ocean-Deep so far.

  “Don’t you see, Mr. Demerest, that Ocean-Deep must mean something more than that? The purpose’ of Ocean-Deep is to devise the ultimate vessels and mechanisms that will suffice to explore and colonize Jupiter. Look about you and see the beginnings of a Jovian environment; the closest approach we can come to it on Earth. It is only a faint image of mighty Jupiter, but it’s a beginning.

  “Destroy this, Mr. Demerest, and you destroy any hope for Jupiter. On the other hand, let us live and we will, together, penetrate and settle the brightest jewel of the Solar System. And long before we can reach the limits of Jupiter, we will be ready for the stars, for the Earth-type planets circling them, and the Jupiter-type planets, too. Luna City won’t be abandoned because both are necessary f
or this ultimate aim.”

  For the moment, Demerest had altogether forgotten about that last button. He said, “Nobody on Luna City has heard of this.”

  “You haven’t. There are those on Luna City who know. If you had told them of your plan of destruction, they would have stopped you. Naturally, we can’t make this common knowledge and only a few people anywhere can know. The public supports only with difficulty the planetary projects now in progress. If the PPC is parsimonious it is because public opinion limits its generosity. What do you suppose public opinion would say if they thought we were aiming toward Jupiter? What a super-boondoggle that would be in their eyes. But we continue and what money we can save and make use of we place in the various facets of Project Big World.”

  “Project Big World?”

  “Yes,” said Annette. “You know now and I have committed a serious security breach. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Since we’re all dead and since the project is, too.”

  “Wait. now, Mrs. Bergeh.”

  “If you change your mind now, don’t think you can ever talk about Project Big World. That would end the project just as effectively as destruction here would. And it would end both your career and mine. It might end Luna City and Ocean-Deep, too--so now that you know, maybe it makes no difference anyway. You might just as well push that button.”

  “I said wait--” Demerest’s brow was furrowed and his eyes burned with anguish. “I don’t know--”

  Bergen gathered for the sudden jump as Demerest’s tense alertness wavered into uncertain introspection, but Annette grasped her husband’s sleeve.

  A timeless interval that might have been ten seconds long followed and then Demerest held out his laser. “Take it,” he said. “I’ll consider myself under arrest.”

  “You can’t be arrested,” said Annette, “without the whole story coming out.” She took the laser and gave it to Bergen. “It will be enough that you return to Luna City and keep silent. Till then we will keep you .under guard.”

  Bergen was at the manual controls. The inner door slid shut and after that there was the thunderous waterclap of the water returning into the lock.