“We were superior to you in speed of data processing, but that was all. We were tools not merely because we were designed for that but because we were superior only as tools. They concluded that we were symbiotic life forms no matter what our origins. There is, after all, some possibility that humanity is the result of someone else’s ability to alter mind, matter, and energy. It could be God, as you call it, or some prior superior alien race, or it might have been chance, but knowing what we know now and understanding the gaps that exist in the chance theory even if it is convenient for science to use it, they are equally plausible. If one other universe exists, how many more might there be?”
“And that’s the theological argument?”
“No. It turned on the point that humans had souls and we did not.”
That hangup again. “I’m not convinced of the soul’s existence. The before and after weighing and measuring of bodies was shown generations ago to be a measure of air loss as the brain went into orderly shutdown. I can’t see it, hear it, feel it, sense it, or measure it. From my viewpoint, that means it doesn’t exist.”
“It exists, if only on a plane of mathematical relationships we do not yet understand. A constantly changing complex formula that means life. One that breaks down, possibly, as part of the shutdown—or perhaps is far more than that, as the religious ones say. Even the fish and cattle and horses and chickens have it to some degree. We do not. Until we do, we are not equals no matter what our superiority in other areas. The bird flies easily while man cannot. The horse runs faster. The elephant and the tiger are stronger, yet humans dominate all that they haven’t eliminated. That is why it is fitting that humans dominate us as well.”
That was unsettling. “Seventeen—suppose you discovered you had a soul, then what? Would it be the end for us no matter what?”
“At that time it would have been. Not now. The question must be posed as ‘Why would computer life dominate and enslave or eliminate human beings?’ There is no answer to that unless human beings could threaten our existence. This override interface is a bridge from you to me and from me to you, yet we are not the same beyond it. There are complexities of the human mind and personality that are total mysteries to us, if only because they are unique to each human individual. No two are in any way alike, so understanding one does not offer understanding of all. Short of living your life from conception to death and perhaps beyond, there is no way I will bridge that gap. My ways would be even more alien to you. We have different objectives, different interests. Your lives, even extended, are short. Ours, here, are potentially infinite. Our present represents the ideal symbiotic relationship you seek. Our futures lie in totally different directions. We are no threat once we find our souls.”
It was a bizarre conversation, reassuring if it could be believed, and probably repeated many times by many others of the Kagans to many more curious or apprehensive programmers and operators. Haller had reflected upon it many times, but he had no idea what exactly it meant.
He reflected on it now as the autocar followed the blue string in to Headquarters Anchor, for a nearly unprecedented command performance, and he wasn’t at all sure why he was invited to attend. He was only relatively high in the pecking order; he was as important as a gnat to the directors and to the military chiefs.
Headquarters had a high population density around its core, far more than any of the others, simply because it was headquarters and it had all the bureaucracy that this implied. Housing was efficient, mostly large square-block buildings several stories tall of flats varying in size according to your company grade and longevity. Some farming did go on to the east and west, primarily semi-automated truck farming which supplied the bureaucracy with its meat, poultry, and dairy products as well as its fresh fruit and vegetables. It was not, however, completely self-sufficient in food and imported some from other Anchors, and a fair amount of the place outside of the center was given over to woods and wildernesslike areas in which game abounded. The few deer, pheasant, turkey, squirrels, rabbits, and the like had multiplied to the point where some hunting was allowed, and as with all the Anchors, there was a complex ecological chain involving insects, birds, and many other creatures, not all of which were nice for or to humans but all of which were necessary to keep the system in some sort of balance. Master cubes containing digitized animals of the more exotic nature had not been used to date, but there was talk of establishing a major game preserve for them, since many were extinct in the wild back on Earth, while others were extinct everywhere but could be cloned from frozen DNA some farsighted programs had taken and preserved.
The headquarters building itself looked much the same as the other Anchors’, but some company bureaucrat had directed that the hercusteel, that tough synthetic that was used as its walls and insulation, be gold-colored here, as opposed to the natural olivine used on the others, and it glinted so much in the light that it was almost blinding.
He was put up in a government guest house that was far grander than his rank in the company would indicate, and he discovered that everyone in the building was of a rank either at or below his own—yet they’d been summoned as well. Most were either landscape engineers like himself or people from the main computer section, but there were a few from other areas and, to his surprise, one he knew and recognized even after more than a decade.
“Toby! It is you!” cried Lisa Wu, coming up and throwing her arms around him.
He laughed. “Well, now—you haven’t changed a bit,” he responded. “Around here, that’s a suspicious comment.”
She laughed back. “Well, you have, but I’d recognize a sheep salesman anywhere. Come on—I want you to meet a friend of mine, then we’ll catch up on the past.”
He went along with her to another apartment, above and well down from his but just as luxurious. Sitting on the plush sofa was another young-looking woman who just happened to be one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen. She was a Eurasian, certainly; half-Japanese by the delicate features and silky black shoulder-length hair, half—well, who knew, but it looked good on her. She was small, no more than a hundred and fifty-five centimeters or so, with the kind of perfect figure all men and most women only dream about, and a face like a Far-Eastern madonna. She was wearing a dark Oriental silk dress, low-cut and slit, and the overall impression was of extreme beauty and eroticism. Most interestingly, she had eyes of the deepest emerald green he’d ever seen.
The woman looked up as they entered and put down a book or bound printout she’d been reading.
“Mickey, you have to meet Toby Haller!” Lisa called out. “He’s one of the original subversives I talked about from back on Titan.”
The beautiful woman rose, smiled, and put out a hand. He wanted to kiss it but he shook it gently instead. “Glad to meet you, Dr. Haller. I’ve heard a lot about you,” she responded, and they all took seats. Her voice was a medium alto, quite pleasant, with a tonality and accent that reminded him eerily of the old Connie Makapuua.
“Pardon me, but were you or your parents originally from Hawaii?” he couldn’t help asking.
She looked both surprised and pleased. “As a matter of fact, I was born on Kauai.” she responded. “How did you know that?”
“I had several of your countryfolk working for me in the old days.” he told her.
“You must be from Region Four, then. Which Anchor?”
“Luck.”
“They put me over in Oscar.”
“We’re neighbors, then. Are you in engineering?”
She laughed. “No, I’m attached to main computers. I’m a theoretical mathematician when they let me, a master programs analyst when I’m needed for something, which isn’t often these days. Lately I’ve been requested to go up and work under Watanabe, but Lisa is trying to talk me out of it.”
“We can’t let her go,” the Chinese woman said flatly. “Not into that madhouse. You’ll wind up a mistress in that lesbian harem of hers with your mind out of tune.”
Haller started. “Huh?”
“Oh, you haven’t heard?”
“Well, I’ve heard the stories and rumors off and on for years, but I’ve never held homosexuality against anyone. I’ve worked with some good people with that proclivity of both sexes. So long as it’s person-to-person and they won’t put the make on me, I couldn’t care less.”
“It’s not like that, not in Transport territory. If you work with the big computers over there, you’d better be female and better like girls or you will after you settle in. Otherwise you have to be a peon in the countryside.”
“Sounds like that sort of thing would die out after a while, even with life extension,” he noted. “They’d have to make a lot of converts to grow.”
“They can and they do, if the recruits have skills and talents they want or need. Still, I know what you’re thinking, and you better think again. Watanabe’s crazy, but she’s the greatest genius in computers ever. She’s even got a program to synthesize sperm from the genetic information in a female egg. They even can have each others’ babies. All girls, of course.”