I asked her if she meant the paranormal.
‘Oh, the way you use that label. Tom, dearest, my hero, your adopted daughter whom you so neglect – she has inexplicable, paranormal, experiences all the time.
They’re part of her normal life. Nobody can account for them. We need to reconceptualise our thought, as you have reconceptualised society. Stop clinging to frigid reason.
‘Chimborazo is a million times stranger than Cang Hai’s world, yet we think we can account for it within science, can accommodate it within our perceptual Umwelt. Yet all the time it’s performing miracles. Turning a sack of superfluid into a conscious entity … That’s a miracle worthy of Jesus Christ. Yet Dreiser doesn’t turn a hair of his moustache …
‘Anyhow, I must be going. I just called to bring you this little present.’ From a pocket of her overalls she produced a photocube. In it a complex coil slowly revolved, its strands studded with seedlike dots. I held it up to the light and asked her what it was.
‘They’ve analysed one of the exteroceptors they hacked off Chimborazo. This is just an enlarged snippet of its version of a DNA structure. You see how greatly it is more complex than human DNA? Four strands needed to hold its inheritance. The doubled double helix.’
When I was up and about I went to see Choihosla again, this time taking the trouble to knock at his door. We talked these matters over. I even ventured to speculate whether mankind was experiencing a million years of regret that it had achieved consciousness, with the burdens that accompanied it.
‘We all suffer on occasions from the dark soul of the night,’ he said.
‘You mean the dark night of the soul, Youssef.’
‘No, no. Look outside! I mean the dark soul of the night.’
Was it the old quirky sage, George Bernard Shaw, who had said that Utopia had been achieved only on paper? Perhaps it had been achieved too in Steve Rollins’s simulation. The people in his quantputer went about their business without feeling, without any sense of tomorrow, being subject to Steve’s team’s supervision. Not a sparrow fell without proper computation. An enviable state?
It was time to get to work again.
I called the advisers of Adminex to me. The date was the first day of Month Ten, 2071.
‘Hello!’ Dayo said, seeing me with my stick for the first time. ‘What’s happened to you?’
‘The human condition,’ I told him.
It was necessary to set about drawing up a constitution for our community. We needed to have the best possible way of life memorialised and, as far as might be, made clear to all.
The Adminex meeting was well attended. Clearly the external threat – if threat it was – from Chimborazo had served to excite our intelligence, if not to unite us. Only once before had so many people attended our forums, when Dreiser had addressed us. They gathered under the doomed Hindenburg and sat there quietly. By now, I thought with affection, I knew all of their faces and most of their names, these creatures of a human Olympus.
A late arrival at our discussion was Arnold Poulsen, who came by jo-jo car. It was a long while since I had seen him; he so rarely entered our forums. He sat now, his hands clasped between his knees, his long pale hair straggling about his face, saying nothing, contributing nothing but his presence.
Because I had been away I knew that things had moved on, and I anticipated argument and opposition. But even Feneloni seemed to have undergone a change of mind.
Speaking slowly, he said, ‘I must put aside my reservations regarding your creation of a better and just society. I felt the wisdom of your judgement while I was shut away, and it seems to have had its bearing on my change of mind. While it’s true I long to get back to Earth, that’s no reason to create difficulties here. I can’t exactly bring myself to back you, but I won’t oppose you.’
We shook hands. Our listeners applauded briefly.
Crispin Barcunda was present with Belle Rivers. She was looking younger and dressing differently, although she still strung herself about with rock crystal beads. It was noticeable how affectionately she and Crispin regarded each other.