Many believed that the entities experiencing consciousness were products of some higher, more spiritually directed form of intelligence pursuing objectives of its own. Urzin liked to think so too, but he admitted that this was largely for reasons of emotional appeal and internal conviction—although why this should be seen as an admission, indicating some kind of weakness, he wasn’t quite sure. However, he did believe that the ancestral humans who had inhabited the Earth when it orbited Saturn had been more directly attuned to such realities, and in something comparable to a collective amnesia that had befallen the race as a consequence of the cataclysms that had occurred since, that awareness had been lost. He believed it was part of his role to help the race rediscover whatever future had been destined in those far-off times, and that they would find it out among the stars. Interestingly, it had been the very ordeal brought on by the fall from that earlier idyll that had spurred the technological advancement that now made such a migration possible. Without the hardships and insecurities that it had endured, and the restlessness and ambitions which those things had engendered, humanity might have existed indefinitely in a state of blissful but stagnant ease. Maybe the religious believers from Earth who stated that their Lord, Buddha, Allah, or whatever worked in strange ways had a point.
He stood in his suite in the Hexagon at Foundation on Titan, contemplating a panorama of waterfalls in a rain forest beneath a sunny sky of blue and shining white clouds. Jon Foy, higher up in his tower, liked looking out at a dead surface in the gloom, but Urzin preferred internal graphics creations that he could choose to suit his mood. The latest theory he had been invited to consider was from the school that sought a naturalist explanation for things, and posed the many-universe version of quantum mechanics as being potentially capable of originating the complexity of living systems that confounded conventional attempts at explanation. Essentially, the suggestion was that if in a sufficiently vast totality, everything that could happen would happen somewhere, and if some mechanism existed for communicating information between the all-but-infinite number of universes making up the totality, then life having emerged in one part, however unlikely, could propagate itself to the rest.
In effect, it was an attempt to put traditional evolution on a more solid foundation. Urzin didn’t really think it mattered that much. Whether or not living things had arrived at their present form through some process of change from simpler beginnings, or appeared abruptly as expressions of complex genetic programs whose origins could at present hardly even be guessed at, wasn’t the issue. The real question was, had the programs written themselves through the accumulating effects of unguided natural processes, or had something that knew what it was doing written them? Urzin liked his own theory better. And he was quite happy to concede that emotional appeal was probably the real reason why most people ended up supporting any theory, whatever other reasons they might profess. He was still cogitating over the issue, when the house manager informed him that Mylor Vorse was at the door. Right on time as always. Urzin acknowledged by voice and had him enter. Vorse appeared from the outer room of the suite moments later. He was carrying two dark bottles with maroon labels embellished in gold lettering.
“Mylor. I haven’t seen you for a while. You must be busy. My! What have we here?”
“A dry merlot from Mimas. Superb, Xen! The manager there sent me a crate on behalf of the work force. I thought you’d like a couple of bottles to add to your reserve.”
“My thanks, indeed.” Urzin raised one of the bottles to inspect it. “And what did you do to earn such esteem from the winemakers on Mimas?”
“Oh . . . I think it was in appreciation of the shipping we’ve provided for their crop produce generally. Personally, I think we’ve all got more to be thankful to them for. But it was a nice bonus, anyway.”
Urzin took the bottles over to a cabinet by the wall and found a place for them in the mildly chilled section. “But that wasn’t what you wanted to see me about,” he said, straightening back up and turning.