Beyond Flesh

by Gardner Dozois

  Joe laughed, exultantly, and lay down to watch the sunrise.

  It struck him afresh how lovely a place this was. See how the small brilliant spark of the sun swam up out of eastern fogbanks colored dusky purple and veined with rose and gold; see how the light strengthened until the great hollow arch of the sky became one shout of radiance; see how the light spilled warm and living over a broad fair land, the million square miles of rustling low forests and wave-blinking lakes and feather-plumed hydrogen geysers; and see, see, see how the ice mountains of the west flashed like blued steel!

  Anglesey drew the wild morning wind deep into his lungs and shouted with a boy’s joy.

  ###

  “I’m not a biologist myself,” said Viken carefully. “But maybe for that reason I can better give you the general picture. Then Lopez or Matsumoto can answer any questions of detail.”

  “Excellent,” nodded Cornelius. “Why don’t you assume I am totally ignorant of this project? I very nearly am, you know.”

  “If you wish,” laughed Viken.

  They stood in an outer office of the xenobiology section. No one else was around, for the station’s clocks said 1730 GMT and there was only one shift. No point in having more, until Anglesey’s half of the enterprise had actually begun gathering quantitative data.

  The physicist bent over and took a paperweight off a desk. “One of the boys made this for fun,” he said, “but it’s a pretty good model of Joe. He stands about five feet tall at the head.”

  Cornelius turned the plastic image over in his hands. If you could imagine such a thing as a feline centaur with a thick prehensile tail—The torso was squat, long-armed, immensely muscular; the hairless head was round, wide-nosed, with big deep-set eyes and heavy jaws, but it was really quite a human face. The overall color was bluish gray.

  “Male, I see,” he remarked.

  “Of course. Perhaps you don’t understand. Joe is the complete pseudojovian: as far as we can tell, the final model, with all the bugs worked out. He’s the answer to a research question that took fifty years to ask.” Viken looked sideways at Cornelius. “So you realize the importance of your job, don’t you?”

  “I’ll do my best,” said the psionicist. “But if . . . well, let’s say that tube failure or something causes you to lose Joe before I’ve solved the oscillation problem. You do have other pseudos in reserve, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Viken moodily. “But the cost—We’re not on an unlimited budget. We do go through a lot of money, because it’s expensive to stand up and sneeze this far from Earth. But for that same reason our margin is slim.”

  He jammed hands in pockets and slouched toward the inner door, the laboratories, head down and talking in a low, hurried voice:

  “Perhaps you don’t realize what a nightmare planet Jupiter is. Not just the surface gravity—a shade under three gees, what’s that? But the gravitational potential, ten times Earth’s. The temperature. The pressure . . . above all, the atmosphere, and the storms, and the darkness!

  “When a spaceship goes down to the Jovian surface, it’s a radio-controlled job; it leaks like a sieve, to equalize pressure, but otherwise it’s the sturdiest, most utterly powerful model ever designed; it’s loaded with every instrument, every servomechanism, every safety device the human mind has yet thought up to protect a million-dollar hunk of precision equipment.

  “And what happens? Half the ships never reach the surface at all. A storm snatches them and throws them away, or they collide with a floating chunk of Ice VII—small version of the Red Spot—or, so help me, what passes for a flock of birds rams one and stoves it in!

  “As for the fifty percent which does land, it’s a one-way trip. We don’t even try to bring them back. If the stresses coming down haven’t sprung something, the corrosion has doomed them anyway. Hydrogen at Jovian pressure does funny things to metals.

  “It cost a total of—about five million dollars—to set Joe, one pseudo, down there. Each pseudo to follow will cost, if we’re lucky, a couple of million more.”

  Viken kicked open the door and led the way through. Beyond was a big room, low-ceilinged, coldly lit, and murmurous with ventilators. It reminded Cornelius of a nucleonics lab; for a moment he wasn’t sure why, then recognized the intricacies of remote control, remote observation, walls enclosing forces which could destroy the entire moon.

  “These are required by the pressure, of course,” said Viken, pointing to a row of shields. “And the cold. And the hydrogen itself, as a minor hazard. We have units here duplicating conditions in the Jovian, uh, stratosphere. This is where the whole project really began.”

  “I’ve heard something about that,” nodded Cornelius. “Didn’t you scoop up airborne spores?”

  “Not I.” Viken chuckled. “Totti’s crew did, about fifty years ago. Proved there was life on Jupiter. A life using liquid methane as its basic solvent, solid ammonia as a starting point for nitrate synthesis—the plants use solar energy to build unsaturated carbon compounds, releasing hydrogen; the animals eat the plants and reduce those compounds again to the saturated form. There is even an equivalent of combustion. The reactions involve complex enzymes and . . . well, it’s out of my line.”

  “Jovian biochemistry is pretty well understood, then.”

  “Oh, yes. Even in Totti’s day, they had a highly developed biotic technology: Earth bacteria had already been synthesized and most gene structures pretty well mapped. The only reason it took so long to diagram Jovian life processes was the technical difficulty, high pressure and so on.”

  “When did you actually get a look at Jupiter’s surface?”

  “Gray managed that, about thirty years ago. Set a televisor ship down, a ship that lasted long enough to flash him quite a series of pictures. Since then, the technique has improved. We know that Jupiter is crawling with its own weird kind of life, probably more fertile than Earth. Extrapolating from the airborne microorganisms, our team made trial syntheses of metazoans and—”

  Viken sighed. “Damn it, if only there were intelligent native life! Think what they could tell us, Cornelius, the data, the—Just think back how far we’ve gone since Lavoisier, with the low-pressure chemistry of Earth. Here’s a chance to learn a high-pressure chemistry and physics at least as rich with possibilities!”

  After a moment, Cornelius murmured slyly: “Are you certain there aren’t any Jovians?”

  “Oh, sure, there could be several billion of them,” shrugged Viken. “Cities, empires, anything you like. Jupiter has the surface area of a hundred Earths, and we’ve only seen maybe a dozen small regions. But we do know there aren’t any Jovians using radio. Considering their atmosphere, it’s unlikely they ever would invent it for themselves—imagine how thick a vacuum tube has to be, how strong a pump you need! So it was finally decided we’d better make our own Jovians.”

  Cornelius followed him through the lab, into another room. This was less cluttered, it had a more finished appearance: The experimenter’s haywire rig had yielded to the assured precision of an engineer.

  Viken went over to one of the panels which lined the walls and looked at its gauges. “Beyond this lies another pseudo,” he said. “Female, in this instance. She’s at a pressure of two hundred atmospheres and a temperature of 194 Absolute. There’s a . . . an umbilical arrangement, I guess you’d call it, to keep her alive. She was grown to adulthood in this, uh, fetal stage—we patterned our Jovians after the terrestrial mammal. She’s never been conscious, she won’t ever be till she’s ‘born.’ We have a total of twenty males and sixty females waiting here. We can count on about half reaching the surface. More can be created as required.

  “It isn’t the pseudos that are so expensive, it’s their transportation. So Joe is down there alone till we’re sure that his kind can survive.”

  “I take it you experimented with lower forms first,” said Cornelius.

  “Of course. It took twenty years, even with forced-catalysis techniques, to work from an a
rtificial airborne spore to Joe. We’ve used the psibeam to control everything from pseudoinsects on up. Interspecies control is possible, you know, if your puppet’s nervous system is deliberately designed for it, and isn’t given a chance to grow into a pattern different from the esman’s.”

  “And Joe is the first specimen who’s given trouble?”

  “Yes.”

  “Scratch one hypothesis.” Cornelius sat down on a workbench, dangling thick legs and running a hand through thin sandy hair. “I thought maybe some physical effect of Jupiter was responsible. Now it looks as if the difficulty is with Joe himself.”

  “We’ve all suspected that much,” said Viken. He struck a cigarette and sucked in his cheeks around the smoke. His eyes were gloomy. “Hard to see how. The biotics engineers tell me Pseudocentaurus sapiens has been more carefully designed than any product of natural evolution.”

  “Even the brain?”

  “Yes. It’s patterned directly on the human, to make psibeam control possible, but there are improvements—greater stability.”

  “There are still the psychological aspects, though,” said Cornelius. “In spite of all our amplifiers and other fancy gadgets, psi is essentially a branch of psychology, even today . . . or maybe it’s the other way around. Let’s consider traumatic experiences. I take it the . . . the adult Jovian’s fetus has a rough trip going down?”

  “The ship does,” said Viken. “Not the pseudo itself, which is wrapped up in fluid just like you were before birth.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Cornelius, “the two hundred atmospheres pressure here is not the same as whatever unthinkable pressure exists down on Jupiter. Could the change be injurious?”

  Viken gave him a look of respect. “Not likely,” he answered. “I told you the J-ships are designed leaky. External pressure is transmitted to the, uh, uterine mechanism through a series of diaphragms, in a gradual fashion. It takes hours to make the descent, you realize.”

  “Well, what happens next?” went on Cornelius. “The ship lands, the uterine mechanism opens, the umbilical connection disengages, and Joe is, shall we say, born. But he has an adult brain. He is not protected by the only half-developed infant brain from the shock of sudden awareness.”

  “We thought of that,” said Viken. “Anglesey was on the psibeam, in phase with Joe, when the ship left this moon. So it wasn’t really Joe who emerged, who perceived. Joe has never been much more than a biological waldo. He can only suffer mental shock to the extent that Ed does, because it is Ed down there!”

  “As you will,” said Cornelius. “Still, you didn’t plan for a race of puppets, did you?”

  “Oh, heavens, no,” said Viken. “Out of the question. Once we know Joe is well established, we’ll import a few more esmen and get him some assistance in the form of other pseudos. Eventually females will be sent down, and uncontrolled males, to be educated by the puppets. A new generation will be born normally—Well, anyhow, the ultimate aim is a small civilization of Jovians. There will be hunters, miners, artisans, farmers, housewives, the works. They will support a few key members, a kind of priesthood. And that priesthood will be espcontrolled, as Joe is. It will exist solely to make instruments, take readings, perform experiments, and tell us what we want to know!”

  Cornelius nodded. In a general way, this was the Jovian project as he had understood it. He could appreciate the importance of his own assignment.

  Only, he still had no clue to the cause of that positive feedback in the K-tubes.

  And what could he do about it?

  ###

  His hands were still bruised. Oh, God, he thought with a groan, for the hundredth time, does it affect me that much? While Joe was fighting down there, did I really hammer my fists on metal up here?

  His eyes smouldered across the room, to the bench where Cornelius worked. He didn’t like Cornelius, fat cigar-sucking slob, interminably talking and talking. He had about given up trying to be civil to the Earthworm.

  The psionicist laid down a screwdriver and flexed cramped fingers. “Whuff!” he smiled. “I’m going to take a break.”

  The half-assembled esprojector made a gaunt backdrop for his wide, soft body, where it squatted toad-fashion on the bench. Anglesey detested the whole idea of anyone sharing this room, even for a few hours a day. Of late he had been demanding his meals brought here, left outside the door of his adjoining bedroom-bath. He had not gone beyond for quite some time now.

  And why should I?

  “Couldn’t you hurry it up a little?” snapped Anglesey.

  Cornelius flushed. “If you’d had an assembled spare machine, instead of loose parts—” he began. Shrugging, he took out a cigar stub and relit it carefully; his supply had to last a long time.

  Anglesey wondered if those stinking clouds were blown from his mouth on malicious purpose. I don’t like you, Mr. Earthman Cornelius, and it is doubtless quite mutual.

  “There was no obvious need for one, until the other esmen arrive,” said Anglesey in a sullen voice. “And the testing instruments report this one in perfectly good order.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Cornelius, “at irregular intervals it goes into wild oscillations which burn out the K-tube. The problem is why. I’ll have you try out this new machine as soon as it is ready, but, frankly, I don’t believe the trouble lies in electronic failure at all—or even in unsuspected physical effects.”

  “Where, then?” Anglesey felt more at ease as the discussion grew purely technical.

  “Well, look. What exactly is the K-tube? It’s the heart of the esprojector. It amplifies your natural psionic pulses, uses them to modulate the carrier wave, and shoots the whole beam down at Joe. It also picks up Joe’s resonating impulses and amplifies them for your benefit. Everything else is auxiliary to the K-tube.”

  “Spare me the lecture,” snarled Anglesey.

  “I was only rehearsing the obvious,” said Cornelius, “because every now and then it is the obvious answer which is hardest to see. Maybe it isn’t the K-tube which is misbehaving. Maybe it is you.”

  “What?” The white face gaped at him. A dawning rage crept red across its thin bones.

  “Nothing personal intended,” said Cornelius hastily. “But you know what a tricky beast the subconscious is. Suppose, just as a working hypothesis, that way down underneath you don’t want to be on Jupiter. I imagine it is a rather terrifying environment. Or there may be some obscure Freudian element involved. Or, quite simply and naturally, your subconscious may fail to understand that Joe’s death does not entail your own.”

  “Um-m-m—” Mirabile dictu, Anglesey remained calm. He rubbed his chin with one skeletal hand. “Can you be more explicit?”

  “Only in a rough way,” replied Cornelius. “Your conscious mind sends a motor impulse along the psibeam to Joe. Simultaneously, your subconscious mind, being scared of the whole business, emits the glandular-vascular-cardiac-visceral impulses associated with fear. These react on Joe, whose tension is transmitted back along the beam. Feeling Joe’s somatic fear symptoms, your subconscious gets still more worried, thereby increasing the symptoms—Get it? It’s exactly similar to ordinary neurasthenia, with this exception: that since there is a powerful amplifier, the K-tube, involved, the oscillations can build up uncontrollably within a second or two. You should be thankful the tube does burn out—otherwise your brain might do so!”

  For a moment Anglesey was quiet. Then he laughed. It was a hard, barbaric laughter. Cornelius started as it struck his eardrums.

  “Nice idea,” said the esman. “But I’m afraid it won’t fit all the data. You see, I like it down there. I like being Joe.”

  He paused for a while, then continued in a dry impersonal tone: “Don’t judge the environment from my notes. They’re just idiotic things like estimates of wind velocity, temperature variations, mineral properties—insignificant. What I can’t put in is how Jupiter looks through a Jovian’s infrared-seeing eyes.”

  “Different, I should think,”
ventured Cornelius after a minute’s clumsy silence.

  “Yes and no. It’s hard to put into language. Some of it I can’t, because man hasn’t got the concepts. But . . . oh, I can’t describe it. Shakespeare himself couldn’t. Just remember that everything about Jupiter which is cold and poisonous and gloomy to us is right for Joe.”

  Anglesey’s tone grew remote, as if he spoke to himself:

  “Imagine walking under a glowing violet sky, where great flashing clouds sweep the earth with shadow and rain strides beneath them. Imagine walking on the slopes of a mountain like polished metal, with a clean red flame exploding above you and thunder laughing in the ground. Imagine a cool wild stream, and low trees with dark coppery flowers, and a waterfall, methane-fall . . . whatever you like . . . leaping off a cliff, and the strong live wind shakes its mane full of rainbows! Imagine a whole forest, dark and breathing, and here and there you glimpse a pale-red wavering will-o’-the-wisp, which is the life radiation of some fleet shy animal, and . . . and—”

  Anglesey croaked into silence. He stared down at his clenched fists, then he closed his eyes tight and tears ran out between the lids.

  “Imagine being strong!”

  Suddenly he snatched up the helmet, crammed it on his head, and twirled the control knobs. Joe had been sleeping, down in the night, but Joe was about to wake up and—roar under the four great moons till all the forest feared him?

  Cornelius slipped quietly out of the room.

  ###

  In the long brazen sunset light, beneath dusky cloud banks brooding storm, he strode up the hillslope with a sense of day’s work done. Across his back, two woven baskets balanced each other, one laden with the pungent black fruit of the thorntree and one with cable-thick creepers to be used as rope. The axe on his shoulder caught the waning sunlight and tossed it blindingly back.

  It had not been hard labor, but weariness dragged at his mind and he did not relish the household chores yet to be performed: cooking and cleaning and all the rest. Why couldn’t they hurry up and get him some helpers?