Creations (5 page)

“Excuse me, what process?” Roy asked from the far sofa.

“California runs a lottery-based treatment programme. It’s not all random, you can get a preferential weighting, but you still need to get your name selected if you’re going to have a child.”

“But if it’s going to be loved, isn’t that all that matters?“ Roy said. “Are you suggesting you should deny a child its chance at life just on someone else’s say so?”

“We’re not suggesting that at all. But they’re trying to get the population down, and they can only have so many millions of
births a year. These fertility treatments aren’t something normal people can just pay for, they’re controlled.”

“It seems a messed up kind of law that tells a mother she can’t have the children she’s always wanted,” Ira said.

“We keep applying,” she said. “With Max being in such a good job, that gives us a better chance than most.”

“Sounds pretty ironic to me,“ Ira said. “An evolutionist being told he’s not allowed to have children unless his number comes up. Survival of the fittest? Or the luckiest?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Max said, pretending not to have noticed the jibe. “The laws have to be the same for everyone. It’s just the world we live in now.”

“The world that science has given us you mean,“ Ira said. “Ice caps half melted, hurricanes in every state, oceans turned to poison. Is that ‘just the world we live in’ too?”

Max sighed inwardly; it hadn’t taken long. “It was men with axes and chainsaws that deforested Brazil, nothing more. It’s greed that’s got us where we are now, unconstrained industrialisation. We’re the generation that has to put the brakes on, put those constraints back in place. It’s not pleasant, but there we are. The kind of work I do helps us develop new technology without doing the damage. That’s what science has to be for.”

“So that’s why you just flew across the country, when most people will never get to fly in their lives? Why you’re flying to Chile in a few weeks’ time?”

“The Chile trip is part of the GRACE controls, it’s vital work. It’s one of the world’s hotspots for new extinctions, and there have to be biodiversity surveys if we’re going to minimise the damage.”

“Or maybe if you’d never tampered in the first place, you wouldn’t need to.”

Max didn’t reply. He had plenty he could say, but the talk of GRACE controls and tampering with nature was getting dangerously close to the subject of the Children of the Faith, and the
reasons for that group’s establishment, and it wasn’t somewhere he wanted to go. Fifteen years ago, when the point of no return seemed unavoidable — the Geometric Rate of Catastrophic Extinction itself, just around the corner — the advent of apocalyptic religious groups was an almost inevitable consequence of human psychology. The idea that God’s Earth was about to be destroyed by the activities of those same scientists who denied God’s creation in the first place must have been irresistible to those predisposed to such beliefs. Including, judging by his lapel pin, Gillian’s soon-to-be brother-in-law.

“So, Max, where did you grow up?” Roy asked. The question was harmless enough — an attempt to defuse an uncomfortable discussion, maybe, or to move on to other things — but Max had been on edge since the moment he’d entered the house and couldn’t help looking for an angle, or speculating on what Roy had already been told.

“I was born in London,” Max said. “But we lived in Toulouse for a few years, then my father’s job moved to Palmdale when I was four.”

“What was your father like?”

“He brought me up well,” Max said, wondering what kind of answer was expected. “As well as I hope to bring up any children I may have. He taught me to think for myself, think rationally and objectively, not just follow the herd.” He wondered if he’d been too obvious with that last comment, but it reflected his mood. None of Gillian’s family seemed to react.

“And what did he do?”

“He was in the space programme. He designed science packages for space probes, planetary landers.” That was less overt, but if anything more likely to get a reaction.

“Spreading man’s corruption into the cosmos too then,” Ira said.

“Most of what we know about Callisto and Europa is due to instruments he designed,” Max said, as calmly and flatly as he
could manage.

“So tell me this,” Ira said. “With the world like it is, and rules about who can turn their lights on and who can take a plane ride and who can have children, why are we still sending people up there? Why do we have these space planes and bases on the Moon and people going to Mars?”

The answer was a simple one, and one that Max was prepared to stick to for as long as it took whenever this question came up. “Humanity needs to be a multi-world species,” he said. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the last fifty years it’s that one world isn’t enough. It’s too fragile. Even if we didn’t have these problems with industrialisation and pollution, all it would take is one big asteroid strike and we’d be gone, like the dinosaurs. We need to spread out. The world being in this state only makes it more urgent, not less.” He hadn’t had to mention the dinosaurs, but sitting among people who believed giant reptiles died out in Noah’s flood, it was hard to pass up the opportunity.

“And why did you fly here?” Gillian’s mother hadn’t spoken a word throughout the whole exchange, sitting next to Ira, watching Max intently. “It’s good to see Gillian and all, but what could be so important that they fly you here just for four days?”

In fact Derry and Laura had both maintained an obedient silence throughout the discussion. It seemed to be lesson number one of being a Letz family female: keeping quiet while the men talked grown-up. It was something Max was glad Gillian had left behind her.

“Max has had a job offer,” Gillian said. “They wanted him to come to Washington to talk face to face about it.”

“Does that mean you’ll be living here?” Derry said.

“No,” Max said. “It’s not a job as such, more a project that UCLA could have contracted me out for, but I won’t be taking it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t agree with what they’re doing.”

Ira visibly stirred at that; the idea of the Darwinist having
principles must have seemed out of place.

“What exactly are they doing?” Roy again, another probing question thrown in from the far side of the room.

“They’re, ah, they’re testing a new technology, but I think it could do more harm than good.”

“Like technology always has, you mean?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing, apart from the fact that this ‘progress’ as it’s called has only ever brought suffering to the world. And men like you have been at the forefront.”

So Roy was making more than just polite conversation; there was an angle after all. “I don’t think the people whose lives have been saved by vaccines and medical scans and clean water supplies would think so,” Max said. “Or maybe you’d prefer to have lived when average life expectancy was thirty and infant mortality ran at fifty percent?”

“Compared with now? When no one can have children at all without a say so from the government and a gut full of medicines?”

“We’ve got problems,” Max said. “The world has a lot of problems. But I’m not the one who made them. Previous generations who didn’t know what they were doing, maybe. Those who did and should have known better, sure. But right now you have to look further east for the real culprits. Half the restrictions we’ve imposed on ourselves as a society are because the Chinese are refusing to cut back, and they know they can afford to defy us because if we pollute as much as they are then the whole biosphere will die out. It’s a dangerous game they’re playing, but they know we can’t afford to oppose them, that all we can do is fix the damage they’re doing as they’re doing it and try to keep our own half of the world functioning. They’re not getting off lightly either — those Shanghai flood defences couldn’t last forever — but they know they’ve got us cornered. They’re having the same problems as us, as far as we can tell — heavy metals and
hormone analogues in the water, epidemic infertility — but they can afford to stonewall us when we try to make them play fair. So don’t blame me for the mess. If we switched off all the power stations and went to live in the forests, we would
not
have a better life.”

There was silence after Max had finished. He hadn’t meant to turn it into a lecture, but it was hard to keep it in when he felt this challenged. He felt he’d crossed a line though, and Gillian would find it hard to forgive him if he let a full blown fight develop.

“Anyway, I’m tired after the drive,” he said. “I’m going to head up early. Derry, it’s been good to see you, Gillian, I’ll see you later on. Goodnight.”

* * *

He checked his work messages and news updates on his omni as he lay there, fishing the small black tablet out from around his neck to open up its viewer. Then, remembering something Ross had said back in the ESOS presentation, he went to the UCLA site and opened up the Cambria page. And what he saw on that sunlit, rock-strewn landscape didn’t surprise him one bit.

Down below him, framed by the soft green glow of the view-screen controls, the creatures were swarming. The gathering was one of the largest he had ever seen, at least twenty thousand on each side, covering the slopes and valley floor which lay between the two groups. That they had come here to fight was beyond doubt.

He descended, taking in the individuals, counting off the species and castes that were present: the shielders with their low, squat bodies flaring out like barricades; the mantis-like throwers, their elongated upper limbs as accurate as they were strong; and the chargers, their blood-red crests curving outward and downward like devils’ horns.

And then it began. As if some invisible signal had spread
down the lines the front ranks advanced, immediately fanning out to broaden their front and increase their speed. Like avalanches of armour and muscle they raced down the slopes towards each other and onto the valley floor, as the volleys of rocks from the throwers thickened overhead. Even when they collided, piling up like tectonic ranges of roiling, seething carnage, the charge barely slowed. By the time the last fighters reached the middle, half their predecessors were dead and the count was still rising.

For six years now the experiment had been running, a vast digital ecosystem playing out like some enormous game where the only players were the simulated organisms who inhabited it. It was partly a research tool into the emergence of biodiversity, partly a UCLA PR exercise with interested members of the public offering up spare processor time to help run the code. Though for most if its time it had been the scene of one pitched battle after another as the surviving species savaged each other for the limited food supplies that remained.

This was what this place had produced. From those simple beginnings, those blind, stupid creatures with barely enough brains and body parts to keep themselves alive, this was what the rules of the game had created. Increase the mutation rate, accelerate the divergence, and suddenly a simulated ecosystem that should have rivalled the Amazon rainforest turns into a bloodbath.

Was this why the ESOS proposal made him so uneasy? On the surface there was no comparison — their machines would be built
not
to mutate,
not
to evolve — but still something about it was gnawing at him.

He closed down the viewer and made the sign to switch off the omni altogether. Then he saw another message, this one from his colleague, John Olson, back in L.A. It wasn’t long, just a cryptic note from John’s UCLA address, something about the delivery they’d both been waiting for having arrived at last. Max
smiled; at least he had something to look forward to. Then he shut down for good and turned off the light, hoping to get some rest.

He was still awake when Gillian came up. He wondered if she’d be mad with him for missing dinner, snubbing her family, but instead she lay down next to him and said “you okay?” She stroked his hair.

“Yeah, it was just getting to me, that’s all.”

“I know it was. I think Roy likes you, if it’s any consolation.”

Max snorted, genuine disbelief. “Really?”

“He said he hopes you didn’t take anything personally, that you seemed a pretty regular guy.”

Max couldn’t think of a reply; he looked at the ceiling instead while she continued to stroke him.

“Did you see that company wrote to us?” Gillian said eventually. “The one you went to today?”

“What do you mean?”

“It was addressed to both of us, it’ll be on your omni as well. Some kind of terms and conditions form for that job.”

Max sat up and reached over. This time he opened the home account and sure enough the message was there: a document attachment showing more legal small print concerning the terms of the offer. Nothing confidential, just the dry output of the ESOS human resources department.

“Look at this bit,” Gillian said, pointing to one of the items in the contents list. It was described as “Medical Aspects”. Max squinted in, looking at the size of the font and its position near the top of the list. It had been done subtly, but it almost looked as if it had been placed there to be noticed.

He followed the link, and yet again felt his eyes drawn to one particular paragraph.

Full class II medical facilities are available at the Area of Operations (AO). These facilities are owned and run by ESOS, and are available to all employees, resident contractors and their families. Note that due to
the location of the AO, these facilities are not subject to international regulations concerning corrective surgery, fertility treatment and genetic screening
.

“Where is this place?” Gillian said. “I guess not Washington if they can get round the rules like that.”

“No, it’s in the South Pacific somewhere.”

“And you said you’d be there for a year?”

“That’s right.”

“So they must let families go with people if it’s so far, right? That must be why they sent this to both of us, because we’d both be going?”

Max nodded; he knew exactly where Gillian was headed.

“It means we could get treatment there,” she said. “We could have children, without having to get through the appeals. Do you read it like that too?”