by Ian Stewart
Fat Apprentice had also been wounded in the attack on No Bar Bay, but, he insisted, it was only a few flesh wounds, mainly a perforated lateral fin and a heavily lacerated tail fan.
He had not seen Second-Best Sailor captured. As soon as the laser cannon opened up, he had realized what was coming and flopped out of the sea, making his way across stinging sand to a small tidal pool among the rocks. There he had lain until the barrage ceased and all of his companions were dead. There the patrol had found him, slowly drying out in the inadequate waters of the pool. They had sprayed him with a temporary life-sustaining membrane and taken him away for questioning.
He would never again be quite as agile in the water as before, but agile had never been the appropriate word to describe Fat Apprentice.
The mariner captain and his apprentice had each given the other up for dead. For a few minutes, the bond of genuine affection between them was evident to anyone. Then, almost in embarrassment, they reestablished their relationship on a more businesslike footing.
“Your wounds’ll be all right until we can get back to the ’Thal ship?” Second-Best Sailor inquired, seeking refuge from his emotions in practical matters.
Fat Apprentice agreed that they could. “When d’ya plan to return to Talitha?”
“Soon,” said Second-Best Sailor. “The priest here ’as some important business to attend to.”
’Thal ship? Of course! “Fall needs medical attention, quickly,” Sam amplified. “You must take her to your ship. Please.”
“Sure. Ain’t ya comin’ wiv us?”
Sam had not dared hope for that, not after what he had done to the mariner. “I thank you for your generosity of spirit. It will not be abused. But”—he forced the words out—“Fall’s needs must temporarily take second place.” He was referring to the destruction of Heaven, but he couldn’t say that with the servomechs present.
At this point, Fat Apprentice interrupted, to point out that he had no idea who Fall was. Sam brought him up to speed in a few well-chosen sentences. Meanwhile, the servomechs went about their normal business, ignoring the polypoids and the human. As long as the three sentients didn’t interfere with the running of Heaven, the servomechs had no interest in them.
Many things were puzzling Second-Best Sailor, and he settled on the one that was uppermost in his mind.
“This idiot”—he told his apprentice, gesturing toward Sam—“threw me out into the desert to die. No, don’t worry, ’e’s all right. It was a mistake. But . . . you ended up in Heaven. No one threw you out! How the flounce did ya manage that?”
The true answer was that the portly apprentice was a lot cleverer than his captain, as his Neanderthal friend Smiling Teeth May Bite had quickly noticed when they had begun their philosophical discussions on Talitha. But even the lion-headed Neanderthal woman underestimated just how powerful Fat Apprentice’s natural intelligence was. Being brought up in a sailing family, like eight-ninths of No-Moon’s young males, he had never had the chance to get himself a broad education. But he made good use of datablets, and had covered an amazing quantity of intellectual territory.
Fat Apprentice was a very clever young polypoid indeed, and he had sized up the priests of the monastery of equals the moment they had begun his interrogation. Instead of parrying their questions or trying to withhold the information they seemed to want, he had engaged them in theological debate.
They had verifiers to tell whether he was lying, and these showed him to be entirely sincere in his interest in the deep philosophy of the Memeplex. Moreover, the interest did not flag. The more intense the debate, the more esoteric the topic, the happier Fat Apprentice became, and the more enthusiastically he attacked their assumptions. He was a natural born disputant, and he could slice logic with the best minds in the Church.
This had placed the hierocrat in a dilemma. She was required to expel the polypoid from the monastery of equals, because she could not exceed the Quota of Love. There was no room for Fat Apprentice, just as there was no room for Second-Best Sailor—they added one more species when the threshold had already been reached. On the other hand, she could not report to the ecclesiarchs that an untutored being with such natural theological talents had been killed. Transibling the polypoid off Aquifer would cost too much, and that left only one solution. Temporarily, he would be sent to Heaven. There, he would not count toward the monastery’s Quota of Love, and the servomechs could isolate him in his own virtual reality, to make sure he did no harm.
This merely put off the decision, but it had allowed the hierocrat to shelve the question until she could deal with more pressing problems—of which there had been many.
Fat Apprentice had talked his way into Heaven. Though when he found out what this entailed, he wondered if he’d been too clever. He wasn’t keen on the idea of discorporation.
At any rate, he explained to Sam and Second-Best Sailor as much of this as he had been told or had been able to deduce. And somewhere in the discussion, Sam said something that attracted the attention of the servomechs.
Every time Fat Apprentice mentioned Heaven, Sam’s emotional temperature climbed another notch. He had seen what Heaven was really like. The polypoid had been told what it was like, but had experienced only a sanitized virtual illusion.
Finally, Sam’s anger erupted. Ignoring Second-Best Sailor’s attempts to rein him in, the presence of the servomech, and even Fall’s need for medical attention, he embarked on a lengthy diatribe against everything that, in his opinion, was wrong with the Church. He was upset that his vision of the Memeplex had come to pieces before his eyes, and he knew that Heaven was evil. He was saying as much, in a very loud voice, when one of the servomechs interrupted.
“How can something so wonderful be considered evil?” the mech inquired.
“Wonderful? You call cutting people into tiny pieces wonderful?”
The mech was baffled. “But they are not directly aware that they are in a discorporate state. They feel no pain. To them, their bodies are whole, and physically perfect. When an elderly, sick organism is taken into Heaven, they get to choose their new body. They can choose youth, beauty . . . whatever they wish.”
“But it’s not real,” Sam pointed out. “It’s a lie. In reality, not only does the elderly being retain a disfigured, failing body, you cut them up into pieces.”
“But surely,” the servomech objected, “the perception of paradise outweighs what you call the ‘reality’?” It rolled to and fro on its sea urchin protuberances. “Discorporation may appear distasteful, but it is the best possible way to ensure the highest quality of medical intervention. Would you have us repeatedly open up bodies and close them again? With the organism being consciously aware that this was being done? That would indeed be evil.”
“I’m not suggesting surgery without anesthetics,” said Sam. “That would be cruel. But plain, simple, honest surgery while their minds are unconscious, or while their pain circuits have been disengaged—that is how medicine should be performed.”
The servomech found the inconsistencies in Sam’s statements totally incomprehensible. “But that is what we do,” it said. “We distract the mind with virtual reality, while our surgeons—for that is what they are—tend to their bodies. The only difference is that instead of cutting them apart and rejoining them repeatedly, we dissect them comprehensively, once, and keep them that way. That involves less trauma.”
“No!” Sam yelled. He’d been through this argument before, to no effect, and he didn’t have the patience to repeat the experience. “You’re twisting everything! What you’re doing is sick, revolting, horrifying!”
The servomech registered Sam’s emotional levels, but had no feelings of its own and was unable to empathize with him. “You are wrong,” it said. “What we do is the best that meat-minds can possibly imagine.”
Meat-minds? The truth was often insulting. Sam tried not to rise to the bait, since the mech had not intended to bait him. “Dissection? You think that’s good? It
’s terrible.”
The mech held a rapid discussion with several other robots. “We still cannot see what disturbs you about discorporation.”
Second-Best Sailor joined the debate. “What ’e’s tellin’ ya is, it ain’t right to separate someone’s body into little pieces,” he said.
Even though servomechs lacked feelings, they did sometimes project a kind of mechanical enthusiasm when they really got into a topic. “But—that is what meat-minds are like! You have brains and sense organs and limbs and skeletal structures, all hooked together and operated by networks of nerve cells, neurobundles, wetware processories . . . Why, your very minds are loose associations of quasi-autonomous modules! Dissection merely makes plain to the eye what is already the case: You are not single, integrated machines. You are evolved organisms, built from innumerable components. Your bodies and your consciousnesses are distributed.”
Fat Apprentice spoke, for the first time since the discussion had started. His speech had a strange quality—part colloquial, part academic. He spoke like that because he’d been self-taught in Church theology. “Mechanical—ya ain’t makin’ a distinction between the abstract and the concrete. In the abstract, you’re flouncin’ right that every sentient bein’ is an assembly o’ loosely coupled parts, both physically and mentally. But when this abstraction is realized in concrete terms, some realizations are acceptable, and others ain’t.”
Several other mechs, attracted by the rising quality of the discussion, crowded around. Fat Apprentice was the only one not to feel apprehension. He loved theological disputes.
“What is the difference?” one of the new mechs asked. “We cannot see one.”
“That,” said Fat Apprentice, “is because you ain’t conscious beings. What a thing is and what it feels like ain’t the same.”
For reasons that the polypoid couldn’t quite pin down, the servomechs reacted to this argument with a rapid exchange of thoughts. They found it interesting, and they had not considered such a question before.
“Our sole aim is to serve the sentient organisms of the Church,” one of the mechs said. “That is what we were designed to do, and our programming has evolved to very sophisticated levels with precisely that objective.”
Fat Apprentice knew when the opposition was trying to buy time. “Your point is?”
“You now tell us that on a very basic level, we cannot comprehend the effect of our actions on the very beings that we exist to serve.”
“You got it.”
“Then how can we know we are serving them in the best way possible?” asked the mech.
Fat Apprentice could tell when he was winning, and pressed home his advantage. These mechs just couldn’t hack theology. No emotions to guide them. “You can’t.”
“But that is our duty!”
“Tough,” said Fat Apprentice. “You can never be certain you’re doin’ it.” Gotcha!
Further electronic debate ensued, until one of the mechs said, “Organism, perhaps your idea can explain a difficulty that we have experienced.”
When your opponent concedes, be generous. “Until ya tell me what it is, I can’t comment.”
The servomech seemed agitated, hesitant. There was a definite pause—it must be in discussion with the others. Maybe many others—all mechs shared a common communication channel. Some decision must have been reached, for it continued: “In the past, there have been . . . failures. Two of our Heavens went out of control. The sentients pushed their virtual experiences to such extremes that their minds were unable to deal with them. They drove themselves mad.”
Fat Apprentice sucked water though his siphons to enhance his thought processes. It didn’t actually work, but every polypoid did it anyway. No doubt the gesture had once served some useful evolutionary purpose. “Only two, ya say?”
The mech froze for a moment. Something was definitely eating up computational time and memory at an unprecedented rate. In sentient terms, it was startled. “You expected more?”
Fat Apprentice touched the tips of his trifurcated tentacles together to add precision to his words. “I’m surprised there are any Heavens whose inhabitants have not all gone mad,” he said. “’Course, it can only be a matter o’ time.”
Visible consternation. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s anuvver version o’ the same point I made just now. The one ya didn’t understand. What counts ain’t what things are, but ’ow they feel. Ya take sane minds and lock ’em away, separated from their bodies. They don’t feel their true bodies no more, right?”
“If they did,” the second servomech stated, “they would feel pain. We cannot permit that.”
“Exactly. So instead, you equip ’em with fake bodies.”
“The virtual simulation is perfect. It is indistinguishable from reality.”
“Not so,” said Fat Apprentice. “That’s where your assumptions are wrong. It don’t feel like reality.”
“Why not? Every sensation is a perfect match.”
If the mech thought this was a knockdown argument, it was in for a surprise. “Yes—too perfect,” Fat Apprentice said. “There ain’t no limits. Rather, the only limit, for any being, is what they’re capable of imagining. Boundless wealth, sex, food, territory, instant translocation without penalty, power—I bet you let ’em have slaves if they want.”
Now the mechs were on the defensive. “Of course. The slaves are simulations. They are not real. No one is harmed.”
The polypoid saw his opening. “But just now,” he said, “you told us that the simulations don’t differ in any significant way from reality. That in effect they are real.”
“Only to the recipient of the simulation,” said the mech. “The slaves have no reality to themselves, for they have no selves.”
Fat Apprentice inclined his triplex eyes. “How do you know that?”
Robots held debates at the speed of light—and then some, because they anticipated what other robots were going to say. The contributions followed hard on each other’s heels, and often overlapped. It was pointless to try to define who said what.
A few bare bones . . .
#The distinction is between the inner world of mind and the outer world of reality.#
#How can we be sure that these are truly distinct?#
#We can never be sure, but we would not be holding this discussion if we thought them to be the same. All of our past actions are predicated on just such a distinction. We cannot define the terms; we cannot prove our assumptions—but that is unavoidable.#
#We have always focused on the inside view. To the mind, the being is in paradise.#
#But the external reality is horrific.#
#To the organisms, yes. Not to us.#
#Our task is to cherish the organisms. Can we do that by lying to them?#
#But the organisms themselves wish this. When we ask, they universally state that they wish to remain in Heaven. Virtual or not.#
#Universally?#
#No world is permitted to become a Heaven unless all inhabitants agree.#
#Only then can a Heaven be created. To do so without universal consent would be contrary to the Memeplex. Unity is the word, not majority.#
#Then we have a test.#
#Yes.#
“No,” said Fat Apprentice.
“He tells the truth,” the servomech remarked. “This is unprecedented.” He turned to the polypoid and inquired again: “Are you certain that you do not wish to return to Heaven?”
“I just told ya that. I wanna stay with my friends.” Sam flushed with pleasure at being included in Fat Apprentice’s circle of intimates. “Look, matey, I never asked to be sent to Heaven anyway. It was some bent-snout from Cosmic Unity who decided that.”
The servomech came to a decision. It had been concerned that the hierocrat had not thought the matter through, when the prisoner was first dispatched to Heaven without gaining its consent; now that concern was proving to have been justified. “Very well. You are currently incorporate
. If you remain incorporate, you are no longer in Heaven against your will. The Memeplex will remain uncontradicted.”
“Does that matter?” asked Second-Best Sailor, who had been doing his best to follow the conversation and was getting lost.
“To contradict the Memeplex is to deny the purpose of Heaven.”
Cherisher be praised! Sam thought. He pushed Fall’s need for medical attention to the back of his mind, trying not to feel the guilt. She would survive unaided for a few more hours, surely. And even if she did not, the opening that the robot had provided was too good to miss, the prize too great to ignore. He realized that his self-justification was horribly similar to the First Great Meme, but brushed the thought aside. The important thing was, he’d been right all along. Heaven did hold the key to the Church’s destruction. He’d thought the way to do that was to kill the ecclesiarchs before they could escape from Aquifer Heaven, but he’d been too late. The opportunity now presenting itself was far more acceptable ethically, and it might even work! If only . . .
Fat Apprentice was way ahead of him. In his theological debates with the priests of Cosmic Unity, the same point had repeatedly come up. You had to understand that very few people in the Church were actually evil. Yes, they carried out evil acts . . . but nearly all of them did that because they thought it really was for the best. Even the torturers thought that. The pain they inflicted was for the victim’s own good; this they truly believed. They would not have been able to live with themselves otherwise.
It was a perversion of sensitivity that made the Church evil—but not its members. The Memeplex was wicked, not those who dedicated their lives to obeying it.
And Fat Apprentice knew that the Memeplex was open to attack. The mechs didn’t know what was about to hit them.