He made me feel a little awkward, just standing there, so I slid down off the parapet and stood in front of him. He seemed to be smaller than I remembered. He was rubbing his hands together as though it was cold, and looking up the broad avenue of bizarre Vigoland sculptures into the northern blue-morning sky. 'Do you want to walk?' he asked.
'Yes, let’s.' We started across the bridge, towards the first flight of steps on the far side of the obelisk and fountain.
'Thank you for coming.' Linter looked at me, then quickly away.
'That’s all right. Pleasant city.' I took off my leather jacket and slung it over my shoulder. I was wearing jeans and boots, but it was a blouse and skirt day, really. 'So, how are you getting on?'
'I’m still staying, if that’s what you want to know.' Defensively.
'I assumed you were.'
He relaxed, coughed. We walked across the broad, empty bridge. It was still too early for most people to be up and about, and we seemed to be alone in the park. The severe, square, stone-plinthed lights of the bridge went slowly by, counterpoints to the curves of the strange statues.
'I… I wanted to give you this.' Linter stopped, felt inside his jacket and brought out what looked like a gold-plated Parker pen. He twisted the top off; where the nib should have been there was a grey tube covered in tiny coloured symbols which belonged to no language on Earth. A little red tell-tale winked lazily. It looked insignificant, somehow. He put the top back on the terminal. 'Will you take it?' he said, blinking.
'Yes, if you’re sure.'
'I haven’t used it for weeks.'
'How did you ask the ship to see me?'
'It sends down drones to talk to me. I offered the terminal to them, but they wouldn’t take it. The ship won’t take it. I don’t think it wants to be responsible.'
'You want me to be?'
'As a friend. I’d like you to; please. Please take it.'
'Look, why not keep it but don’t use it. In case there’s some emergency—'
'No. No; just take it, please.' Linter looked into my eyes for a moment. 'It’s just a formality.'
I felt a strange urge to laugh, the way he said that. Instead I took the terminal from him and stuffed it into my bomber jacket. Linter sighed. We walked on.
It was a lovely day. The sky was cloudless, the air clear, and fragrant with mixtures of the sea and land. I wasn’t sure whether there really was something about that quality of light that made it northern; perhaps it only looked different because you knew there was just a thousand kilometres or so of as clear, still fresher, colder air between you and the Arctic sea, the great bergs and the millions of square kilometres of ice and snow. It was like being on another planet.
We walked up the steps, Linter seeming to study each one. I was looking around, drinking in the sight and sound and smell of this place, reminding me of my holidays from London. I looked at the man by my side.
'You know you’re not looking too well.'
He didn’t meet my gaze, but appeared to study some distant stonework at the end of the walk. 'Well… no, I guess you could say I’ve changed.' He smiled uncertainly. 'I’m not the man I was.'
Something about the way he said it made me shiver. He was watching his feet again.
'You staying here, in Oslo?' I asked him.
'For the moment, yes. I like it here. It doesn’t feel like a capital city; clean and compact, but—' he broke off, shook his head at something. 'I’ll move on soon though, I think.'
We went on, mounting the steps. Some of the Vigoland sculptures made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. A wave of something like revulsion swept over me, startling me; some planetary repugnance in this northern city. In this world now, they were talking of abandoning the B1 bomber to go ahead with the cruise missile. What had started out as the Neutron Bomb had euphemized into the Enhanced Radiation Warhead and finally into the Reduced Blast Device. They’re all sick and so’s he, I thought suddenly. Infected.
No, that was stupid. I was getting xenophobic. The fault was within, not without.
'Do you mind if I tell you something?'
'What do you mean?' I said. What a weird thing to say, I thought.
'Well you might find it… distasteful; I don’t know.'
'Tell me anyway. I have a strong constitution.'
'I got… I asked the ship to ah… alter me.' He looked at me briefly. I inspected him. The slight stoop, the thinness and paler skin wouldn’t have required the services of the ship. He saw me looking, shook his head. 'No, nothing outside; inside.'
'Oh. What?'
'Well, I got it to… to give me a set of guts more like the locals. And I had the drug glands taken out, and the uh—' he laughed nervously '- the loop system in my balls.'
I kept walking. I believed him, immediately. I couldn’t believe the ship had agreed to do it, but I believed Linter. I didn’t know what to say.
'So, I uh, don’t have any choice about going to the toilet every so often, and I… I had it work on my eyes, too.' He paused. Now it was my turn to keep looking at my feet, clomping up the steps in my fancy Italian climbing boots. I didn’t think I wanted to hear this. 'Sort of re-wired so I see like them. Bit fuzzier, sort of less… well, not fewer colours, but more sort of… squashed up. Can’t see much at night, either. Same sort of thing on my ears and nose. But it… well it almost enhances what you do experience, you know? I’m still glad I had it done.'
'Yeah.' I nodded, not looking at him.
'My immune system isn’t perfect anymore, either. I can get colds, and… that sort of thing. I didn’t get the shape of my dick altered; decided it would pass. Did you know there are considerable variations in genitalia here already? The Bushmen of the Kalahari have a permanent erection, and the women have the Tablier Egyptien; a small fold of flesh covering their genitals.' He waved one hand. 'So I’m not that much of a freak. I guess this isn’t all that terrible really, is it? I don’t know why I thought you might be disgusted or anything.'
'Hmm.' I was wondering what had possessed the ship to do all this to the man. It had agreed to carry out these… I could only think of them as mutilations… and yet it wouldn’t accept his terminal. Why had it done this to him? It said it wanted him to change his mind, but it changed his body instead, pandering to his lunatic desire to become more like the locals.
'Can’t change sex now, if I wanted to. Things’ll still regrow if they get cut off; ship couldn’t alter that, not quickly; take time; intensive care, and it wouldn’t alter my… umm… clockspeed, what-d'you-call-it. So I’ll still grow old slowly, and live longer than them… but I think it might relent later, when it knows I’m sincere.'
All I could think of was that by converting Linter’s physiology to a design closer to the planetary standard, the ship wanted to show the man what a nasty life they led. Perhaps it thought rubbing his nose in the Human Condition would send the man running back to the manifold delights of the ship, content with his Cultural lot at last.
'You don’t mind, do you?'
'Mind? Why should I mind?' I said, and instantly felt foolish for sounding like something from a soap opera.
'Yes, I can see you do,' Linter said. 'You think I’m crazy, don’t you?'
'All right.' I stopped half-way up a flight of steps, turned to him. 'I do, I think you’re crazy to… to throw so much away. It’s… it’s wrong-headed of you, it’s stupid. It’s as if you’re doing it just to annoy people, to test the ship. Are you trying to get it mad at you, or what?'
'Of course not, Sma.' He looked hurt. 'I don’t care that much about the ship, but I was worried… I am concerned about what you might think.' He took my free hand in both of his. They felt cold. 'You’re a friend. You matter to me. I don’t want to offend anybody; not you, not anybody. But I have to do what feels right. This is very important to me; more important than anything else I’ve ever done before. I don’t want to upset anybody, but… look, I’m sorry.' He let go my hand.
'Yeah, I’m sorry too. Bu
t it’s like mutilation. Like infection.'
'Ah, we’re the infection, Sma.' He turned and sat down on the steps, looking back towards the city and the sea. 'We’re the ones who're different, we’re the self-mutilated, the self-mutated. This is the mainstream; we’re just like very smart kids; infants with a brilliant construction kit. They’re real because they live the way they have to. We aren’t because we live the way we want to.'
'Linter,' I said, sitting beside him. 'This is the fucking mental home; the land of the midnight brain. This is the place that gave us Mutual Assured Destruction; they’ve thrown people into boiling water to cure diseases; they use Electro-Convulsive Therapy; a nation with a law against cruel and unusual punishments electrocutes people to death—'
'Go on; mention the death camps,' Linter said, blinking at the blue distance.
'It was never Eden. It isn’t ever going to be, but it might progress. You’re turning your back on every advance we’ve made beyond where they are now, and you’re insulting them as well as the Culture.'
'Oh, pardon me.' He rocked forward on his haunches, hugging himself.
'The only way they can go — and survive — is the same way we’ve come, and you’re saying that’s all shit. That’s refugee mentality, and they wouldn’t thank you for what you’re doing. They would say you’re crazy.'
He shook his head, hands in his armpits, still staring away. 'Maybe they don’t have to take the same route. Maybe they don’t need Minds, maybe they don’t need more and more technology. They might be able to do it by themselves, without wars and revolutions even… just by understanding, by some… belief. By something more natural than we can understand. Naturalness is something they still understand.'
'Naturalness?' I said, loudly. 'This lot’ll tell you anything is natural; they’ll tell you greed and hate and jealousy and paranoia and unthinking religious awe and fear of God and hating anybody who’s another colour or thinks different is natural. Hating blacks or hating whites or hating women or hating men or hating gays; that’s natural. Dog-eat-dog, looking out for number one, no lame ducks… Shit, they’re so convinced about what’s natural it’s the more sophisticated ones that’ll tell you suffering and evil are natural and necessary because otherwise you can’t have pleasure and goodness. They’ll tell you any one of their rotten stupid systems is the natural and right one, the one true way; what’s natural to them is whatever they can use to fight their own grimy corner and fuck everybody else. They’re no more natural than us than an amoeba is more natural than them just because it’s cruder.'
'But Sma, they’re living according to their instincts, or trying to. We’re so proud of living according to our conscious belief, but we’ve lost the idea of shame. And we need that too. We need that even more than they do.'
'What?' I shouted. I whirled round, took him by the shoulders and shook him. 'We should be what? Ashamed of being conscious? Are you crazy? What’s wrong with you? How can you say something like that?'
'Just listen! I don’t mean they’re better; I don’t mean we should try to live like them, I mean that they have an idea of… of light and shade that we don’t have. They’re proud sometimes, too, but they’re ashamed as well; they feel all-conquering and powerful but then they realize how powerless they really are. They know the good in them, but they know the evil in them, too; they recognize both, they live with both. We don’t have that duality, that balance. And… and can’t you see it might be more fulfilling for one individual — me — who has a Culture background who is aware of all life’s possibilities, to live in this society, not the Culture?'
'So you find this… hellhole more fulfilling?'
'Yes, of course I do. Because there’s — because it’s just so… alive. In the end, they’re right Sma; it doesn’t really matter that a lot of what’s going on is what we — or even they — might call "bad"; it’s happening, it’s there, and that’s what matters, that’s what makes it worthwhile to be here and be part of it.'
I took my hands off his shoulders. 'No. I don’t understand you. Dammit Linter, you’re more alien than they are. At least they have an excuse. God, you’re the fucking mythical recent convert, aren’t you? The fanatic. The zealot. I’m sorry for you, man.'
'Well… thank you.' He looked to the sky, blinking again.
'I didn’t want you to understand me too quickly, and—' he made a noise that was not quite a laugh '- I don’t think you are, are you?'
'Don’t give me that pleading look.' I shook my head, but I couldn’t stay angry with him looking like that. Something subsided in me, and I saw a sort of shy smile steal over Linter’s face. 'I am not,' I said, 'going to make this easy for you, Dervley. You’re making a mistake. The biggest you’ll ever make in your life. You’d better realize you’re on your own. Don’t think a few plumbing changes and a new set of bowel bacteria are going to make you any closer to homo sapiens either.'
'You’re a friend, Diziet. I’m glad you’re concerned… but I think I know what I’m doing.'
It was time for me to shake my head again, so I did. Linter held my hand while we walked back down to the bridge and then out of the park. I felt sorry for him because he seemed to have realized his own loneliness. We walked round the city for a while, then went to his apartment for lunch. His place was in a modern block down towards the harbour, not far from the massiveness of the city hall; a bare flat with white walls and little furniture. It hardly looked lived in at all save for a few late Lowry reproductions and sketches by Holbein.
It had clouded over in late morning. I left after lunch. I think he expected me to stay, but I only wanted to get back to the ship.
4.4: God Told Me To Do It
'Why did I do what?'
'What you did to Linter. Alter him. Revert him.'
'Because he asked me to do it,' the ship said. I was standing in the top hangar deck. I’d waited till I was back on the ship before I confronted it, via a remote drone.
'And of course it had nothing to do with hoping he might dislike the feeling so much he’d come back into the fold. Nothing to do with trying to shock him with the pain of being human when the locals have at least had the advantage of growing up with it and getting used to the idea. Nothing to do with letting him inflict a physical and mental torture on himself so you could sit back and say "I told you so" after he came crying to you to take him back.'
'Well as a matter of fact, no. You obviously believe I altered Linter for my own ends. That’s not true. I did what I did because Linter requested it. Certainly I tried to talk him out of it, but when I was convinced that he meant what he said and he knew what he was doing and what it entailed — and when I couldn’t reasonably decide he was mad — I did what he asked.
'It did occur to me he might not enjoy the feeling of being something close to human-basic, but I thought it was obvious from what he’d said when we were talking it over beforehand that he didn’t expect to enjoy it. He knew it would be unpleasant, but he regarded it as a form of birth, or rebirth. I thought it unlikely he would be so unprepared for the experience, and so shocked by it, that he would want to be returned to his genofixed norm, and even less likely that he would go on from there to abandoning his idea of staying on Earth altogether.
'I’m a little disappointed in you, Sma. I thought you would understand me. One’s object in trying to be scrupulously fair and even-handed is not to seek praise, I’m sure, but one would hope that having done something more honest than convenient, one’s motives would not be questioned in such an overtly suspicious manner. I could have refused Linter’s request; I could have claimed that I found the idea unpleasant and didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I could have built a perfectly adequate defence on aesthetic distaste alone; but I didn’t.
'Three reasons: One; I’d have been lying. I don’t find Linter any more repellent or disgusting than I did before. What matters is his mind; his intellect and the state it’s in. Physiological details are largely irrelevant. Certainly his body is le
ss efficient than it was before; less sophisticated, less damage-resistant, less flexible over a given range of conditions than, say, yours… but he’s living in the Twentieth Century West, and at a comparatively privileged economic level; he doesn’t have to have brilliant reflexes or better night-sight than an owl. So his integrity as a conscious entity is less affected by all the alterations I’ve carried out on him than it already was by the very decision to stay on Earth in the first place.
Two; if anything is going to convince Linter we’re the good guys, it’s being fair and reasonable even when he might not be being so. To turn on him because he’s not doing just as I would like, or just as any of us might like, would be to force him further into the idea that Earth is his home, humanity his kin.
'Three; — and this would be sufficient reason by itself — what are we supposed to be about, Sma? What is the Culture? What do we believe in, even if it hardly ever is expressed, even if we are embarrassed about talking about it? Surely in freedom, more than anything else. A relativistic, changing sort of freedom, unbounded by laws or laid-down moral codes, but — in the end — just because it is so hard to pin down and express, a freedom of a far higher quality than anything to be found on any relevant scale on the planet beneath us at the moment.
'The same technological expertise, the same productive surplus which, in pervading our society, first allows us to be here at all and after that allows us the degree of choice we have over what happens to Earth, long ago also allowed us to live exactly as we wish to live, limited only by being expected to respect the same principle applied to others. And that’s so basic that not only does every religion on Earth have some similar form of words in its literature, but almost every religion, philosophy or other belief system ever discovered anywhere else contains the same concept. It is the embedded achievement of that oft-expressed ideal that our society is — perversely — rather embarrassed about. We live with, use, simply get on with our freedom as much as the good people of Earth talk about it; and we talk about it as often as genuine examples of this shy concept can be found down there.
The State of The Art c-4 Page 14