Eden

by Stanisław Lem

  "Now I'm in the dark," said the Physicist.

  The Cyberneticist sat hunched toward the computer, chewing his lips.

  "The general information is that there is no central government?" he asked. "But in reality there is a central government?"

  The computer conferred with the doubler, exchanging noises. The men waited, their heads near the speaker.

  "True. Yes. Pause. The information that there is a central government. Who has it, is. Is not. Who has this information. Is, then is not."

  They looked at one another.

  "Whoever says that the government exists ceases to exist?" the Engineer asked in a half-whisper.

  The Cyberneticist slowly nodded.

  "But that doesn't make sense!" said the Engineer. "The government must have a headquarters, after all, must issue directives, laws, and have bodies that implement them, a hierarchy, an arm. Didn't we encounter soldiers?" The Physicist put a hand on his shoulder. The Engineer fell silent.

  The doubler began coughing, and the computer's green eye flickered rapidly. The speaker said, "Information binary. Pause. One information. Who has it, is. Pause. Other information. Who has it, is, then is not."

  "There is information that is secret?" the Physicist asked. "Whoever has this secret information is killed?"

  Again the speaker squawked, and the doubler coughed on the other side of the computer.

  "No. Who is, then is not. Not death."

  The men took a deep breath.

  "Ask what happens to such individuals," said the Engineer.

  "I don't think I can," said the Cyberneticist. But the Captain and the Engineer insisted, so he muttered, "All right, but I'm not promising anything in the way of an answer."

  "What is the future of one who spreads secret information?" he said into the microphone.

  The dialogue of noises between the computer and the doubler went on for a while; then the speaker replied:

  "Who. Such information. In a self-controlling group. Unknown degree of probability. Degeneration. Pause. The cumulative effect. Nonexistent term. The necessity of adaptation. Conflict. And the weakening of the force potential. Nonexistent term. Pause. A small number of planetary revolutions. Death."

  "What did he say?" asked the Chemist, and they all turned to the Cyberneticist, who shrugged.

  "I have no idea. I told you. The question is too complex. We have to proceed gradually. My guess is that the fate of such an individual is unenviable. He can expect an untimely death—the last sentence was clear—but as to the mechanics of the whole process, I don't know. The self-controlling group is interesting, but we already have plenty to speculate on."

  "Ask him about that factory to the north," said the Engineer.

  "We did," said the Physicist. "That's another complex question. We have a theory about it…"

  "What do you mean, a theory? Didn't he give you an answer?" the Captain interrupted.

  "After a fashion. The factory was abandoned before it went into operation. That we know. But the reason is not so clear. About fifty years ago a plan of biological reconstruction was inaugurated among them. The remodeling of bodily functions—and forms. It's a confusing story. Virtually the entire population of the planet underwent a series of surgical procedures. But this apparently was not so much a matter of changing the present generation as future ones, through the engineered mutation of hereditary material. That, at least, is how we interpret it. In the area of biology communication becomes difficult."

  "What kind of remodeling was it? In what direction?" asked the Captain.

  "That we haven't learned," said the Physicist.

  "Well, we've learned some things," the Cyberneticist said. "Biology—physiology in particular—has a special, almost doctrinal significance for them, distinct from the other fields of science."

  "It could be religious," said the Doctor. "Though their beliefs are more a system of prohibitions and rules than a transcendental theology."

  "They've never believed in a creator?" asked the Captain.

  "We don't know. Remember, such abstractions as faith, god, and the soul cannot be analogized in a computer. We have to ask a multitude of factual questions, and from the answers and half-answers attempt to construct a reasonable theory. What the Doctor calls religion I think may be simply tradition, historically stratified customs and rituals."

  "But what can either religion or tradition have to do with biological research?" asked the Engineer.

  "We don't know. But a connection seems to exist."

  "Maybe it was a matter of their trying to make certain biological facts conform to their beliefs or prejudices."

  "No, it's much more complicated than that."

  "To return to the subject," said the Captain, "what were the consequences of this biological program?"

  "Individuals came into the world with no eyes or a varying number of eyes, or unfit for life, deformed, noseless. And there were a significant number of mental defectives."

  "Ah! Our doubler, and the others!"

  "Yes. Evidently the theory on which they relied was wrong. Over a period of a dozen years, tens of thousands of deformed mutants appeared. They are still reaping today the tragic fruits of that experiment."

  "The plan was abandoned?"

  "We didn't even ask him that," the Cyberneticist admitted. He turned to the microphone.

  "The plan of biological remodeling, does it still exist? What is its future?"

  The computer seemed to be arguing with the doubler, who made feeble hawking sounds.

  "Is he in a bad way?" the Captain asked the Doctor in a low voice.

  "No, better than I expected. He's exhausted, but refused to leave before. And I couldn't give him a transfusion, either, because our doubler's blood appears to be incompatible…"

  "Shh!" hissed the Physicist. The speaker was beginning to crackle.

  "The plan. Is, is not. Pause. First was, now was not. Now mutations, disease. Pause. Information correct. Plan was, now was not."

  "I'm lost," confessed the Engineer.

  "I think he's saying that now the existence of the plan is denied, as though there had never been such a plan, and the mutations are attributed to a disease. The disaster, in other words, was not acknowledged to the community."

  "Acknowledged by whom?"

  "Their allegedly nonexistent government."

  "Wait," said the Engineer. "If, since the passing of the last anonymous ruler, there has been a kind of 'epoch of anarchy,' who introduced the plan?"

  "But you heard. No one introduced it. There was no plan. That's what they say today."

  "Yes, but what did they say fifty years ago?"

  "Something else."

  "That's absurd!"

  "Not at all. Even on Earth there are certain things not admitted publicly, though everyone knows them. In the area of social life, for example, a certain amount of hypocrisy is indispensable. But what for us is a limited phenomenon is central, universal, here."

  "I find it hard to believe," said the Engineer. "And what does it have to do with the factory to the north?"

  "The factory was supposed to produce something necessary for the plan. Perhaps an object of use only to the future, 'reconstructed' generations."

  "Surely there were other factories?"

  "The factories connected with the biological plan—were there many of them, or few?" asked the Cyberneticist.

  The doubler cleared his throat, and the computer answered almost immediately: "Unknown. Factories. The probability, many. Information. No factories."

  "What a society—it's horrifying!" said the Engineer.

  "Why? You never heard of military secrets, or other kinds of classified information?"

  "What type of energy runs these factories?" the Engineer asked the Cyberneticist, but he spoke so close to the microphone that the computer immediately translated the question. The speaker buzzed, then said:

  "Inorganic. Nonexistent term. Bio bio. Pause. Entropy. Constant. Bio. System." T
he red light flashed on the panel.

  "The computer doesn't have the vocabulary," explained the Cyberneticist.

  "Why don't we remove the semantic filters?" the Physicist suggested.

  "You want it to start babbling like a schizophrenic?"

  "We might understand more."

  "What are you talking about?" asked the Doctor.

  "He wants to reduce the computer's selectivity," explained the Cyberneticist. "When the conceptual spectrum of a word, its semantic distribution, is blurred, the computer says that no corresponding term exists. If I remove the filters, it will start contaminating linguistic fields, producing words found in no human language."

  "That way we'll get nearer the doubler's language," said the Physicist.

  "All right. We can try it."

  The Cyberneticist threw a few switches. The Captain looked at the doubler, who now lay with his eyes closed. The Doctor went over to him, examined him for a moment, and returned to his seat without a word.

  The Captain said into the microphone, "To the south of this place is a valley. There are large buildings there. The buildings contain skeletons, and in the earth, all around, are graves."

  "Wait, you can't say graves." The Cyberneticist pulled the flexible arm of the microphone closer to himself. "To the south are architectural constructions, and near them, in holes in the earth, are dead bodies. The bodies of doublers. What does that mean?"

  On this occasion the computer exchanged a long series of coughs and squawks with the doubler. The men noticed that for the first time the machine appeared to be asking, and repeating, a question of its own. Finally the speaker spoke in a monotone.

  "Doubler. Physical work, no. Pause. Electrical organ. Organ work, yes, but acceleration involution degeneration overload. Pause. South is exemplification of self-directed procrustics. Bio- and socio-occlusion deathavoid. Pause. Social isolation not with force, not by compulsion. Voluntary. Pause. Group microadaptation autocentroattraction. Production, yes. No."

  "Brilliant suggestion," the Cyberneticist said to the Physicist. "Autocentroattraction, deathavoid, bio- and socio-occlusion. I warned you."

  "Just a minute," said the Physicist. "This has something to do with forced labor."

  "Just the opposite. He said 'not with force, not by compulsion.' It was voluntary."

  "Well, we'll ask again." The Physicist bent over the microphone. "Not clear," he said. "Tell us, very simply, what is in the valley to the south? A penal colony? A labor camp? What do they produce? And why?"

  The computer had another discussion with the doubler. After almost five minutes it replied:

  "Microgroup voluntary. Interadhesion by compulsion, no. Pause. Each doubler against the microgroup. Chief relationship centripetal. The binding agent is anger. Pause. Who transgresses is punished. Punishment is microgroup voluntary identification. What is the microgroup? Feedback interrelations polyindividualized. Anger is the selfaim. Anger is the selfaim. Pause. Circulation sociopsychointernal. Deathavoid."

  "Wait, what does 'selfaim' mean?" asked the Cyberneticist, seeing that the others were growing impatient.

  "Selfaim, selfsave," said the computer, this time not even consulting the doubler.

  "The instinct of self-preservation?" asked the Physicist.

  "Yes, yes, self-preservation," said the computer.

  "You mean to say you understand that?" cried the Engineer, jumping up from his seat.

  "Understand it, no, but I think he's talking about a prison system. You have small groups within that community, and they keep one another under control."

  "Without guards? Without surveillance?"

  "He said there was no compulsion."

  "Impossible!"

  "Not at all. Imagine two people: one has matches, the other has a matchbox. They hate each other, but can strike a light only together. Anger, he said. Cooperation results from feedback. The compulsion somehow is a product of the internal dynamics of the group."

  "But what are they doing? What are they making? Who is lying in those graves? And why?"

  "You heard what the computer said? 'Procrustics.' That's obviously from 'Procrustean bed.' Assuring conformity by violent means."

  "Ridiculous! How would the doubler know Greek mythology?"

  "It's the computer, not the doubler! It finds the nearest equivalent on the conceptual spectrum! There's a work camp there, but the work may have no purpose or meaning. He said both yes and no after 'production.' The work is their punishment."

  "But how are they forced to work if there are no guards?"

  "The compulsion, as I said, arises from the situation itself. On a sinking ship, for example, one has few choices. Perhaps they're on the deck of that kind of ship all their lives… Since hard physical labor might be harmful to them, perhaps this 'bio-occlusion' operates through their electrical organs."

  "He said 'bio- and socio-occlusion.'"

  "Well, there is adhesion, interadhesion, within the group, a mutual pull that separates the group from society."

  "That doesn't say much."

  "I know no more than you do. We're communicating, remember, at a double remove, the computer between us, displacing the meaning in both directions! Maybe they have a special scientific discipline, maybe procrustics is the theory of the dynamics of such groups, the planning of activities, conflicts, and attractions to produce a special equilibrium based on anger, an equilibrium that unites them and at the same time cuts them off from the outside…"

  "Those are your personal variations on the theme of the computer's schizophrenic babble—not an explanation," growled the Chemist.

  "He's exhausted," said the Doctor. "One or two more questions, no more. Who wants to ask them?"

  "I pass. Maybe you'll have better luck."

  There was a moment's silence.

  "I have a question," said the Captain. "How did you learn of our existence?" he asked into the microphone.

  "Information. Meteorite. Ship," the computer replied after a brief exchange with the doubler. "Ship from another planet. Cosmic rays. Death rays. Degeneration. Pause. Glass encapsulation to destroy. Pause. Observation from observatory. Explosions. I took bearings. Direction of sound, source. Target of rockets. Pause. I went at night. Waited. Defender opened encapsulation. I entered, am."

  "They told you that a ship had landed, with monsters in it?" asked the Engineer.

  "With monsters. Degenerated. From cosmic rays. And that we are protected. With this glass. I took sound bearings. The target. Calculated. Found."

  "You weren't afraid of the monsters?" the Captain asked. "You weren't … deathavoid?"

  "Yes," replied the speaker almost immediately. "But the chance. One in a million planetary revolutions."

  The Physicist nodded. "Each one of us would have tried to come here for that reason."

  "Do you wish to stay with us? We will cure you. There will be no death," the Doctor said.

  "No," answered the speaker.

  "You wish to leave? To return to your people?"

  "Return, no," said the speaker.

  The men looked at one another.

  "We can cure you! You won't die!" said the Doctor. "Tell us, what will you do when you're cured?"

  The computer squawked, and the doubler made a sound so brief that it was barely audible.

  "Zero," said the speaker, and repeated, as though not sure the men had understood correctly, "zero."

  "He doesn't want to stay and doesn't want to go back," muttered the Chemist. "Could he be delirious?"

  They looked at the doubler. His pale-blue eyes were fixed on them. The men could hear his slow, shallow breathing.

  "That's enough," said the Doctor, getting up. "Everyone out."

  "And you?"

  "I'll join you soon. I took two psychedrins—I can sit with him a while longer."

  When the men made for the door, the doubler's smaller torso fell back and his eyes closed.

  In the corridor, the Engineer said, "We asked him all those qu
estions—why didn't he ask us any?"

  "Oh, but he did, earlier," said the Cyberneticist. "About conditions on Earth, our history, the development of space travel. A half-hour before you arrived, he was much more talkative."

  "He must be weak now."

  "He received a heavy dose of radiation. And his trek through the desert probably tired him, too, since he is old."

  "How long do they live?"

  "About sixty revolutions of the planet, slightly less than sixty of our years. Eden's year is shorter."

  "What do they eat?"

  "That was a surprise. It appears that evolution here has taken a different path from the one on Earth. They can assimilate certain inorganic substances directly."

  "Ah," said the Chemist, "the soil that first one brought in!"

  "Yes, but that was thousands of years ago. Now they've modernized, using those plants, the calyxes on the plain, as food accumulators. The calyxes extract from the soil and store compounds that serve the doublers as nourishment. There are different calyxes for different compounds."

  "Of course, they cultivate them," said the Chemist. "To the south we saw whole fields of them. But the doubler who got into the ship, why was he digging about in the clay?"

  "The calyxes retract below ground level after dark."

  "Even so, there was plenty of soil available…"

  "Gentlemen, to bed with you," the Captain said to the Physicist and the Cyberneticist. "We'll take over. It's almost twelve."

  "Twelve midnight?"

  "We've lost all sense of time."

  They heard footsteps behind them. It was the Doctor coming from the library. They looked at him questioningly.

  "He's sleeping," he said. "He's not well. When you went out, I had the impression, even, that…" He didn't finish.

  "Did you say anything to him?"

  "I did. I asked him—I thought, you see, it was all over—if we could do anything for them. For all of them."

  "And what did he say?"

  "'Zero.'" When the Doctor said this, it was like the computer's lifeless voice.

  "Go lie down, all of you," said the Captain. "But first, since we're all together, let me ask you: Do we leave?"