The Genesis Quest

by Donald Moffitt

  “Including people here on the Father Planet?”

  “Yes. He’s an inspiration to thousands. Oh, Bram, you’ll have to hear his words for yourself. They’re stirring.”

  Eena nodded in solemn agreement, a transfixed expression on her face. “The struggle will be long, the victory eternal,” she quoted. “No egg grows until it first divides.”

  “What did Pite mean — he took things?” Bram said.

  Kerthin’s tone became defensive. “He took — he takes what he needs to carry on the struggle. Penser teaches that the resources of the universe are there for the human hand to seize. ‘Ownership is power,’ he says. It isn’t fair for the Nar to own it all.”

  “The Nar share it with us,” Bram said.

  “To share is weakness,” Eena said. “That’s another of the things that Penser says. And to accept is weakness.”

  “I don’t understand the reason for all the antagonism,” Bram said. “Human beings and the Nar have always existed together in harmony. If the Nar knew how you people felt, they’d be terribly upset. But I forgot. They know about Penser.”

  “Not everything, gene brother.” Pite’s colorless eyes flicked over Bram’s face. “The little fracas that caused all the trouble was because Penser intended to take over one of the islands that were still under development on Juxt One. To serve as a starting place for his grand plan. There were installations already in place and a fair-size human population to work from, and not too many Nar to get rid of. He had reliable, trained people around him, and he’d already laid his hands on the equipment he needed — a lot of it from Nar warehouses.”

  “What do you mean, not too many Nar to get rid of?” Bram asked with a growing sense of horror. “You don’t mean that — that this Penser actually contemplated … interfering with Nar physically and removing them from the island?” The idea was almost unthinkable, but Bram was beginning to believe that this Penser person was capable of anything.

  Pite gave an unpleasant laugh. “Let’s just say that they’d be out of the way.”

  “It would never be allowed.”

  “Oh, yes, it would. It would all be over by the time they finished one of their touchy-talky meetings to decide what to do. And then they wouldn’t do anything about it, because there wouldn’t be any point to it — to them. They’d have let Penser keep his island, you can count on it. They’d probably even feed the animals — at first. The yellowlegs don’t fight. They can’t. Touchy-talky, touchy-talky — that’s how they’re made. But we humans know how to fight for what we want. It’s in our history. It’s all there in the King James book and the Shakespeare plays that the Resurgists are so fond of. Except that they think it’s all just words.”

  “Words fester, deeds cleanse,” Eena chanted in what sounded like another Penser quote. “Actions speak louder than words.”

  Bram was having trouble adjusting to the enormity of what Pite had revealed. “Something like that could — could strain relations between human beings and the Nar forever,” he said. “The trust would be gone. It could affect the whole human race.”

  “That’s why it was hushed up,” Pite said. “Even those Ascendist traitors on Juxt One, the ones who opposed Penser and tried to get him deported, didn’t want to give the yellowlegs something like that to think about. Or maybe they were afraid of what would happen to them if they did. We have ways of dealing with traitors.” The pale eyes bored into Bram again. “You wouldn’t inform on Penser, would you, Brammo?” he asked softly.

  “No,” Bram said. Pite’s implied threat had nothing to do with it. Shame alone would seal any human being’s lips. Perhaps it was a good thing, after all, that the Nar paid so little attention to human chatter.

  Pite settled back comfortably in his seat, thinking that he had won his point. Bram settled back in silence, too. He had a lot to think about.

  The squabble on the meeting floor had died down. A new speaker was giving another prescription for human ascendancy.

  “Reproductive autonomy!” a red-faced young woman brayed. She looked around belligerently to see if anyone cared to challenge her. “The key is for humans to breed freely. At fifty human generations to one Nar generation, human population expansion would eventually unravel the fabric of Nar society.”

  Bram was shocked again. The prospect of unrestrained reproductive behavior and unedited genes was appalling. The small human genetic pool, itself stemming from variations of the original metagenome according to a mathematical formula provided by Original Man, needed the constant creation of new genotypes from unexploited alleles. If people simply mated like animals, the species would be endangered by genetic drift.

  “Good idea,” Fraz muttered. “Outbreed the yellowlegs fifty to one.”

  Bram refrained from pointing out that even if the human population on all the planets were to double every generation, it would take fifteen generations for them to reach their first billion. It was hardly a solution that one would expect to appeal to a group of people who, like children, wanted everything handed to them right away. But, Bram reflected, Kerthin’s odd friends didn’t seem to be very good at thinking things through.

  At that moment, Kerthin turned to him and gave him the kind of smile he was used to from her. “I know it’s hard to get used to new ideas,” she whispered. “Give yourself time. When I told Pite what you did, he said that the human race is going to desperately need its own biotechnicians when —”

  “When what?”

  “When things change,” she said. She gave him a pat on the hand and returned her attention to the front of the hall.

  A lively debate about reproductive autonomy was going on. Somebody made a motion that a committee be formed to study it, and the bald man called for nominations from the floor.

  While Bram was trying to fathom the peculiar ritual, a newcomer eased himself into the meeting hall. The burly man who had been left to guard the door followed close behind. He left the newcomer standing at the back and went up to the platform, where he whispered in the moderator’s ear. The moderator let the discussion proceed under its own power for a few minutes while he conferred in low tones with the other people on the platform. Then he went back to the podium and rapped for attention with his block of wood.

  “Gene brothers and gene sisters, can we shelve the business at hand temporarily?” he said. “I know you’re all anxious to hear the news from Juxt One.”

  The newcomer came forward. He was a short man who held himself stretched taller at the expense of having to keep his arms crooked stiffly at his sides. He was dressed in one of the petalsmocks affected by public servants. He had a pale meager face that receded from a little red beak of a nose. He kept darting suspicious glances around the meeting room.

  “I’m going to ask all of you to be discreet, particularly the people who are new here tonight,” the moderator said while the newcomer fumbled with a pouch and extracted a palm-size portable display screen that still had an interface module dangling from it.

  There were loud groans from the audience. “Come on, Jupe,” somebody called out.

  The moderator spread his hands palms out. It was a peculiar use of the gesture, Bram thought. In the company of the Nar, it was a greeting, an invitation to communication. Here, in this segregated human gathering, it was a pushing away.

  “I’m not accusing anybody of being low enough to fink to the decaboos,” the bald man protested. “But sometimes people like to show off what they know, and things get around to where they shouldn’t. So when you talk to people outside, think twice about how much you let out and who you’re telling it to. That goes double for those of you with proselytization assignments. Security first, indoctrination second, as the saying goes. Some of you will recognize the gene brother here and know where he works, and you’ll be able to figure out how the message came through, so keep it to yourselves.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Bram said.

  Amusement showed on Pite’s face. “Lot of rigamarole. You pi
ggyback a coded message on the regular commercial laser traffic between stars. Why bother? You might as well get some sympathizer to send it in an open ’gram. The yellowlegs don’t give a damn, anyway. But these jokers like to think they’re a secret society.”

  “How did I get in?”

  Pite’s negligent wave of the hand was almost an insult. “You’ve been vouched for, Brammo. None of this is worth a bucket of industrial sludge, anyway.”

  “You said it,” Fraz grunted. “The only codes worth worrying about are codes to keep secrets from them.” He hooked a thick thumb at the platform.

  “You talk a lot, Fraz,” Pite said. Fraz’s red cheeks got redder, and he slumped down in his seat.

  The short man in the petalsmock cleared his throat. “Our gene brothers and gene sisters on Juxt One continue to fight for the cause under great difficulties and despite great personal risk,” he said, his little darting glances traveling among the seated people. “But their spirit remains undaunted. There is a smaller human population to work with, resources are slimmer, and travel between the continents and between the planetary bodies in the system is not easy. The unfortunate events of several years ago frightened off many potential converts and made proselytizing more difficult. Membership —” He hesitated. “— has fallen off somewhat.” His voice regained its stridency. “But a loyal, dedicated core of those who believe in human ascendancy remains. And frankly, brothers and sisters, they ought to make us ashamed of ourselves.”

  “Get to the point,” a heckler cried.

  The short man flushed. He thumbed his hand reader and began to stumble through the words he found there. It was an endless document in stilted prose, full of jargon.

  Bram listened, trying to make sense of it. The “struggle” on Juxt One didn’t seem to amount to much. An “education committee” had been formed to “augment the awareness” of moon-dwellers. Workers at a human food factory had been organized to request an increase in allowances from their Nar employers. An “informational” campaign had been launched to persuade human dwellers in rural areas to grow their own potatoes, chimeric soycorn, and sunflowers to lessen their dependence on the Nar infrastructure; however, to accomplish this, the Nar would have to be persuaded to condition large tracts of soil with terrestrial-style microorganisms — most of them custom-designed to hold their own in the Juxt One ecology — so that the crops could be grown outdoors. An Ascendist social club had been started in one of the larger cities and was successfully attracting young people to its Tenday evening get-acquainted parties.

  The audience sat through about ten minutes of the speech. Then somebody started chanting, “Penser, Penser, give us Penser.” Other people joined in the chant and started stamping their feet rhythmically in time with the words. Others in the audience tried to break it up with shouts and slogans of their own, but the pro-Penser faction was louder.

  The bald-headed moderator whispered into the short man’s ear. The short man held up a hand, looking annoyed. The chanting died down. A few stray voices were heard, but the bald man rapped with his wood block and these too died down.

  “Since the last message from Juxt One,” the short man said, “there have been several new reports of Penser being seen on some of the moons in the Juxt system. Like earlier reports over the past few years, these could not be verified. Some of his opponents have suggested that the reports were fabricated — that there was no way Penser could have lifted off-planet, with all space transportation in the hands of the Nar.”

  “Stuff that,” somebody heckled. “There’re plenty of loyal Penserites who’d be happy to loan him their identity for an off-planet trip.”

  “Be that as it may,” the short man said stiffly, “Penser’s various surfacings all seem to take place within small, loyal cadres of his followers, who then proceed to distribute his texts to a wider circle. Or vidtapes of Penser that could have been made anywhere. One or two of these purported appearances were even in other star systems. If that’s the case, we can only conclude that Penser can travel faster than light.”

  It was too much for Fraz. He jumped to his feet. “Whose side are you on, anyway, you son of a spoiled zygote?” he shouted. “How many legs you got under that smock?”

  The moderator banged with his block of wood. “Let the man talk,” he said.

  “Sit down, Fraz,” Pite ordered. “We’ve got him on our list. The main thing now is the message.”

  Still glaring, Fraz sank into his seat. His hands still made two big fists.

  The short man nodded thanks to the moderator. Looking annoyed, he went on. “There are no ‘sides’ in the struggle for human ascendancy. Or there shouldn’t be. I was signing petitions and working for the cause when some of the people in this room were a blob of jelly on a laboratory slide. And I won’t have my motives questioned. I may not agree with all of Penser’s positions, but I’m aware that he has a following here and on other worlds and that he is an important voice in the struggle for human ascendancy, no matter what his differences with the leadership on Juxt One. So I’m going to read his statement, and there will be printouts later for those who want them.”

  He twiddled the control on the little display screen in his palm until it came up with the text he wanted. He cleared his throat again and began to read.

  “The universe is within our grasp,” Bram heard, “but first we must make a fist. The stars like grains of sand will slip through separate fingers, but the human hand, clenched, is capable of possessing the cosmos.”

  With the very first words, the image of a fussy little man at a lectern, peering nearsightedly at a hand-held reader and mouthing someone else’s message, disappeared, and the room was filled with a powerful presence. Bram could almost sense Penser’s forceful personality hanging in the air.

  A hush had fallen over the assembly. The others could sense it, too, even those who had been antagonistic.

  The words themselves were extraordinary. Taken literally, they made no sense, as Bram realized later when he ran over them in his mind. Penser used a lot of repetition, repeating what evidently were his cant phrases: “No egg grows until it divides.” “We shall prevail.” “The matter must be forced.” “To build, we must first destroy.” “Some say there is no goal, only the road ahead; I say the results justify the methods.”

  But as the phrases mounted, building on simple rhythms, they cast a spell. It was language used as Bram had never heard language used before — not to convey information, but to bend and twist human emotion. The closest comparison Bram could think of was the preaching of some of the prophets invented by King James.

  Politics had been among the earliest of the human arts to be revived. It required only three people: two to disagree with each other and a third to be wooed for support. Bram had always thought of it as a dull but necessary instrument used to elect proctors and council members. But until now there had never been a Penser. He had rediscovered the art of demagoguery.

  Bram could see tears running down Eena’s face. In the seat to his right, Kerthin seemed to be in a trance; she sat like a statue, her face lifted and her eyes focused on an imaginary spot somewhere above the lectern.

  “Hold yourselves in readiness, for our time is come,” flowed the smooth words, rising now in peroration. “There is a universe to win.”

  Bram caught Pite nodding meaningfully at Fraz. Pite had been taking notes on the speech, but the notes seemed to consist of short groups of numbers. He saw Bram’s stare and buttoned his writing slate up in the breast pocket of his mono.

  The spell was broken. The people in the seats began to move and talk as if awakening from a dream. Bram heard the arguments starting to break out.

  He turned to Kerthin to say something, but the sound of a chair overturning made him crane his neck. The two who had almost gotten into a fight before were at it again.

  “Take your hands off me!” the anti-Schismatist sputtered. “You and your kind are risking all the progress we’ve made because of the words of t
hat maniac on Juxt One!”

  “Shut your traitorous mouth,” the other spat.

  They scuffled around the floor while others tried to pry them apart, as before. But this time one of them got in a punch. Somebody grabbed his arm, but then another partisan hit the peacemaker, and the fight became general.

  “Stop it, stop it!” The wood block pounded on the lectern, but nobody paid attention. A few people made hastily for the exit, but others poured toward the focus of disturbance.

  “What are we waiting for?” Fraz cried joyfully, and waded into combat, knocking aside vacant chairs as he went.

  Pite gave Bram an ironic glance. “Still sitting on the fence, Brammo?” he asked before heading toward the milling center of the fray.

  Bram grabbed Kerthin by the wrist. “Come on,” he shouted above the din. “We’re getting out of here.” She tried to pull away from him, but he held fast. A fist struck him on the shoulder from behind; whether it was a would-be savior coming to Kerthin’s rescue or a stray blow from the scuffle going on around him, Bram could not tell. He kept hauling on Kerthin’s arm and headed toward the exit.

  “We’ve got to stay and help,” Kerthin railed at him, twisting around to look at the little riot. “Where’s Eena?”

  “She’s doing all right by herself,” Bram said. He could see Eena, standing on a chair and drumming her skinny fists on the top of the head of one of two men who were trying to throttle each other in front of her. As the locked forms swayed back and forth, shifting position, Eena impartially banged on both heads, first one, then the other.