“So do I,” I said, as blandly as I could.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I wouldn’t have got much sleep in any case, knowing that I had to get up at five-thirty to check in on my room’s web-console and then get over to the terminal in time to board. I would have been on edge even if I hadn’t had that bizarre conversation with Rosalind in her blacked-out car, or even if we’d actually spelled out more of what we had to say rather than leaving so much to inference—but there are things that are difficult to say aloud, especially in an era that prides itself on its New Privacy. Although the conventions of the New Privacy had initially been designed as defenses against web leakage, they had inevitably spread their tentacles far and wide.
Eugenics is one of those things that, in the modern world, everybody likes to practice but nobody likes to talk about. It carries too much historical and literary baggage. Rosalind had probably been profoundly glad when I told her that I understood, without it being spelled out, why she had had no more sons after Rowland—and why, as a pre-corollary of the same concern—Roderick the Great had elected to leave his own heritage to a daughter, rather than a son.
Back in the twentieth century, when practical eugenics first became feasible, thanks to in vitro fertilization and the selection of eggs and sperms, even the word “eugenics” had been taboo, and nobody ever used it to describe what they were doing when people carrying seriously problematic genes made certain that the particular eggs and sperms employed to create their offspring were free of those hazards. It must have been obvious, even then, that as reproductive technologies continued to improve, and understanding of genetic potentials improved in tandem, the choices available would become increasingly complex. Even before the advent of the twenty-first century, there were sperm-donor banks in existence that selected for intelligence, athletic ability, musical talent and a score of other factors, to the rough-and-ready extent that it could then be done. And by that time, people had known for centuries, if only as an item of crude folk wisdom, that “genius” and “madness” were closely and strangely allied.
Strictly speaking, that isn’t true—but when it did become possible to speak more strictly, to define more exactly what was going on in neurological terms when individuals had a natural aptitude for mathematics, painting or gymnastics, the alliance between the closeness and the strangeness only became more intricate and more challenging. It had then become possible to found a proper academic discipline of practical neurology, but the art had been in its infancy when Rowland and I had taken Professor Fliegmann’s pioneering course at Imperial.
In themselves, of course, genes don’t “cause” physical characteristics. What they do is make proteins. Even the “control genes” making proteins that determine when and where other genes are switched on in various specialized tissues don’t cause anything in a crudely deterministic sense—but they do help to create propensities on which experience of the world, education and rigorous training can work. Innate talents and character defects still have to be nurtured or opposed, developed and shaped by culture and effort, but they do exist, and they don’t materialize at random, even though the paths of facilitation are sometimes hard to detect. There are random factors involved, as there are in any complex system, but that doesn’t affect the fact that there are fundamental patterns, which usually survive any amount of supplementary random noise.
Sometime around the end of the twentieth century, it was discovered that mathematical ability and the scientific mind-set were based in the enhanced activity of certain parts of the brain, and the particular patterns of initial neural connection present in those areas. The propensity in question begins development in the embryo, prior to birth, in response to a complex combination of factors, some directly genetic and some “indirectly genetic,” in the sense that the effect is hormonally mediated. One of the most significant phases in the chain of causality occurs in the seventh month of pregnancy, when hormonal releases in the body trigger the changes determining whether an individual embryo will manifest male or female secondary sexual characteristics. In the vast majority of cases, of course, the former are chromosomally XY and the latter XX, but there are exceptions and anomalies—and, of course, degrees of effect, even in the cases where the pattern is sustained.
Nobody was a hundred-per-cent sure, back at the dawn of the twenty-first century, whether “secondary sexual characteristics” included mental tendencies, although ninety-nine per cent of the people who took a guess figured that they did, and that the fact that almost all the mathematical and musical geniuses of the past had been male wasn’t simply a reflection of the way that boys and girls had been brought up. Once the genes influencing brain development, both directly and indirectly, had been identified, and sophisticated technological control of the hormonal activity of embryos became possible, the possibility of selecting children for all kinds of talents and potentialities became possible.
In the short term, of course, it led to certain demographic distortions, much as the advent of sex-selection had initially led to a large preponderance of male births—but such distortions tend to be self-correcting, partly because shortages of supply lead to increases in perceived economic value, and partly because intense competition in producing particular results tends to highlight the hazards associated with such results. From an objective viewpoint, however, one couldn’t say that a large number of parents wanting smarter and more scientifically-inclined children was a bad thing, given that the ecocatastrophe was already turning into the Crash. If ever the world had needed scientific geniuses by the score, that was the time. One might almost suspect the involvement of the hand of Providence, especially if you believe that it’s the crafty kind of hand that never gives without taking something away…but I digress.
The first role of genetic engineering is that you can never do just one thing. Genes are multifunctional; you can’t produce one result without producing others, and an attempted increase in one result inevitable leads to increases in the others, not necessarily in proportion. Something else people had known for centuries before the Crash, glimpsed through the clouded lens of crude folk wisdom, was that great mathematicians and scientists, and great musicians and artists, tended to pay a penalty for their exceptionality in terms of other facets of the personality. They were not “mad,” in the sense that they were subject to some kind of mental “illness,” but their minds tended to work in particular and peculiar ways that, if exaggerated, tended toward what was once called “autism.” Crudely put, born scientists were often potentially brilliant in terms of limited focus, but anything but brilliant when it came to functioning efficiently in a social environment. Some mathematical geniuses and brilliant painters were unable even to communicate with other people with any degree of comfort or efficacy.
For a while, it was thought that there might be single spectrum of bundled functions and dysfunctions, which began with “normal” female behavior and then extended through “normal” male behavior and various kinds of “genius” to the breakdown point of “autism,” but that inevitably turned out to be far too simple as a scheme of conceptual geometry. There was an axis of sorts there, but it was complicated by all kinds of extensions into other dimensions—far more than three of them. By the time sophisticated mapping of the propensities became possible, it required a clever AI or a highly unusual genius to get anywhere near a capacity to “visualize” its conceptual geometry—but it could be done, mathematically.
When Peter Bell the First and Roderick the Great decided that they wanted their children to be chips off the old block—scientists of very considerable ability, if not of genius—that kind of practical neurology was still in its relative infancy, but it could be done, to a reasonable level of approximation. Satisfaction was pretty much guaranteed, in the ability department, and the hazards could—in theory at least—be minimized. Where the acceptable minimum was located was, of course, a matter of opinion.
Peter Bell the First took the straightforward option, and de
cided that his son and heir ought to be a biological clone—which minimized some of the risks, but by no means all. The very making of that choice, however, illustrated the fact that he possessed one of the frequent corollaries of scientific genius that some people might regard as a dysfunction: he was subject to an intense feeling of superiority, which made him construe his failures to relate successfully to other human beings as a reflection of their incompetence rather than his. To sum the situation up with brutal simplicity, he was an arrogant son-of-a-bitch, who was very efficient in his vocation, and won awards for that reason, but whom nobody actually liked—including, as it turned out, and perhaps especially, his own clone, Peter Bell the Second.
Roderick the Great was a subtler thinker by far than Peter Bell the First. He had observed the difficulties that often afflicted great scientists in relationships with other human beings, including their own children, and had taken due note of the number of sons of scientists who deliberately chose to direct their efforts in a direction entirely different to the ones their fathers had taken, sometimes refusing to extend their intellectual potential at all. Perhaps because he was a biologist, and not a physical scientist, Roderick made a far more intensive study of practical neurology per se, and came up with the theory that that a male scientist who wanted a reliable heir would do far better to have a female child, who might be unlikely to exhibit the desirable qualities of scientific genius to quite the same degree as a male, but would also be far less likely to suffer the consequences of the undesirable ones. Hence Rosalind, who did not hate Roderick as Peter Bell the Second had hated Peter Bell the First, but loved him very dearly, and did indeed set out to carry forward his intellectual dynasty exactly as he would have wished.
Way beyond the effects of genetics, there is a momentum in such multigenerational processes, of which Rosalind was a beneficiary—and how! The rise of the new house of Usher not only continued, but accelerated, and became unstoppable. That was one in the eye for Eddie Poe—who had, of course, been innocent of any malicious intent in plucking a name out of the air to bestow upon the luckless protagonist of “The Fall of the House of Usher.” On the other hand, it wasn’t entirely obvious that Rosalind had entirely avoided the pitfalls so often associated with male scientific genius.
And so to the second generation.
Peter Bell the Second’s hatred of his father did not take the form of differentiation, as it might easily have done, but of competition. He did not shun solid-state physics, but threw himself into it with a whole heart, intent on surpassing and superseding his parent’s discoveries. Did he succeed? The scientific jury is, I believe, still out. In any case, my father is still alive, so the game is still in play, and will not be over until the Grim Reaper comes to call for a second time—which, given the present state of medical capability, might not be for a long time. My father has already scored one significant victory in outliving his model and rival, so I presume that he must be reckoned to have taken the lead—but we haven’t spoken for years, and I’m no physicist, so I’m not sure exactly how their positions stand, in a purely scientific context.
The dysfunctional fever of arrogant competition being what it is, Peter Bell the Second was always going to produce a clone, and he was always going to do his utmost to make sure that his clone didn’t follow the same path of fierce hatred that his father’s clone had done. By the time he got around to the task of self-reproduction, ectogenetic technology had made numerous significant advances, so he had a better physiological armory at his disposal for the purposes of embryological direction and control. Whether he directed its use wisely, I am not the person to judge, but he does seem to have succeeded in making sure that I would not be the diehard rival to his accomplishments that he was to his father’s. My scientific proclivities were always orientated in a different direction, and I think that my father was glad, although perhaps not wholeheartedly, when he eventually found out that he had spawned a geneticist.
Was he successful in the other aspect of his ambition? I think he was, but I can see how others might beg to disagree. I don’t believe that I hate my father, and would say, if pressed, that I am utterly indifferent to him. On the other hand, I certainly do not love him—and, as I said, I haven’t spoken to him in years. It would not trouble me unduly if I never spoke to him again, but I will go to his funeral, if and when the occasion arises. I owe him that much—and probably a good deal more, though nothing for which I feel particularly grateful.
I never had a mother, of course, so the fact that I never loved my father means that the only person I have ever loved, and perhaps ever will love, is, or was, Magdalen Usher—but I am not the object of this lesson, and am merely present within it to illustrate a general principle and its variations. The real point of the exercise, you will doubtless remember, is why Rosalind only ever had one son, but a multitude of daughters.
Rosalind was her father’s daughter. Had her father not died while she was still relatively young—prematurely, in today’s terms, although the fallout of the Crash was still rather unsettled thirty years ago—he might have taken a more active role in guiding her reproduction. He did die, though, and Rosalind was not content simply to echo his own choice, especially as the dramatic end of the perceived population crisis liberated her to think in terms of more than one child. Perhaps, in some sense, she could not be content to echo his choice, because she felt a powerful desire, if not an actual need, to replace him. At any rate, she decided that she would have a son, and a son of genius, but that she would try to compensate for the dysfunctions that might be attendant upon that genius by providing him with an intimate social relationship that would provide him with a private arena in which to learn and practice social skills, by giving him a near-twin half-sister.
I might well be insulting Rosalind by putting the calculation in those cold terms. I probably sound sarcastic, but if I do, that has more to do with my psychological situation than hers. I don’t intend to imply that Rosalind did what she did for a bad reason. I have every reason to believe that she loves all her children very dearly—even the one who is no longer alive. I’m not suggesting that she had anything but the very best of intentions in trying to maximize Rowland’s and Magadalen’s chances of a happy and successful life. Yes, it was, in retrospect, a recipe for intense incestuous feelings that were perhaps always more likely to end in confusion and disaster than any mere sin, but that was not what she wanted. What she wanted was a boy who might equal Roderick, in more ways than one—and at the very least, she was too wise by far to think that the best route to that outcome would be to clone her father. She was a geneticist, not a physicist; she knew where the limits of genetic practicality lay.
Did Rowland break her heart? No, I don’t believe so. Was he a thankless child, a metaphorical serpent’s tooth? No, not that either. I don’t believe that Rowland is indifferent to his mother, as I am to my father; I believe that he loves her—but he has, as people are wont to say in Lancashire “a funny way of showing it.”
Having replaced Roderick, Rosalind did not see the need to repeat the gesture, and was content to follow Roderick’s thesis that female children were more likely to be successful in life as well as science, by virtue of the moderation of their anti-social tendencies.
Perhaps I am being too vague here in spelling out the “dysfunctions” frequently associated with the scientific mind-set. As I said before, it has nothing to do with “mental illness,” and is primarily concerned with the relationship between sensation and cognition. That is what the scientific mind-set is, in essence: a particular relationship between sensation and cognition, which is inclined toward obsessive attention, disciplined observation, habitual analysis and complex theorization. It is, in a purely logical sense, not easily compatible with empathy. There is more than one alternative mind-set, and the scientific mind-set is capable of more detailed categorization, but in general, the alternative mind-sets typical of the human brain have various features in common. Many people automatically me
et the gaze of others; those possessed of the scientific mindset often have to make a conscious effort to do so. Many people automatically respond sympathetically to touch; those possessed of the scientific mind-set often have to make a conscious effort even to tolerate it, no matter how much they might desire it.
Such factors can make friendship difficult, let alone love—but they are not matters of conscious decision. The defective lens of folk wisdom often used to represent possessors of the scientific mind-set as cold, unfeeling people, perhaps even incapable of emotion. That is not the case; there is nothing sociopathic, psychopathic, schizoid or paranoid about the mind-set itself, although scientists are as vulnerable as anyone else to the random predations of diseases that generate mental symptoms. In general, possessors of the scientific mind-set are by no means unemotional; it is simply that they channel and express their emotions in different ways. They tend to be more extreme and less mutable in their affections. If they do not make friends easily, they maintain bonds of friendship very firmly, even in the absence of everyday reinforcement. If they do not fall in love easily, they tend to do so heavily and cripplingly, even in the absence of what people with different mind-sets consider to the customary expressions and manifestations of love.
That, at least, is how I see the situation—although people possessed of different mind-sets might find it odd, or even incomprehensible.
Not all people possessed of a scientific mind-set are scientists, of course; there are all kinds of reasons why they might divert their efforts into different vocations. Although most litterateurs are, as is only to be expected, possessed of empathic mind-sets, some benefit from the tendencies of the analytical mindset—Edgar Allan Poe and Percy Bysshe Shelley, to name but two. Either of those men, had he been inclined or able to make the choice, might have been a great scientist instead of a great poet. Some scientists, at least, might have been great poets had they taken a different direction in life, although I am not the person to judge whether I might have been one of them. Rowland could have, I think. Perhaps Magdalen should have, if only to free herself from Eden and the Hive. We are no long living in the nineteenth century, though. What scope and demand is there for poets nowadays?
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