Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors by Original (pdf) (no david read aloud txt) 📕

dry people, intent on the struts and gears of

the universe, seeking incontrovertible facts. Oh, we don’t discount

facts but we use them to create the parallel universes of the spirit, while

the As see them only as jigsaw pieces.

Young Feller came to us for convenience. He found us bearable so

long as we didn’t try to discuss with him. To him our discussion was

prattle. So, can you imagine him out there among the street crowds?

Amid the meaningless jabber, the pointless scurry, the inanities of

thought? Hum anity drives us to screaming point with its lack of the

simplest understandings; what do you think it did to him?

Are you insulted? Too bloody bad.

At the Project he had gritted his teeth to deal with people who were

by human standards an intelligent lot, but contact with the raw mass

of humanity shocked his mind. He refused to leave this house after the

first days; he had his course of study and a full range of terminals, so

why go out? W ith the duplicate Library Access Card — which I

forged for him, by the way — he was content.

It had to be biology; surely you see that. In his place what would

your need have been? They couldn’t breed from each other, could

they? They were clones, identical save for the Y chromosomes; in-

breeding could only bring regression; copulation would have been

super-incest with no benefit as random variation regressed the

children to common stock in a couple of generations. The Group’s

existence would have become pointless for lack of perpetuation.

186

George Turner

Ay, Lady, gush gush! Al this was plain from the moment we saw why all

biology texts were removed from the Project site before C Group was advanced enough to get at them. No doubt your script tells you to make sure I understand. Which should mean that my progress is no longer under my control.

Some sort of an end is in sight.

So Young Feller had to become the greatest biologist in the world,

for him not so difficult an achievement, and in eight weeks he learned

everything that a global information storage network could provide.

By then he knew precisely how to regulate the guesswork of the Project

scientists, how to create exactly the mental and genetic types required

with no gambling on results. He knew how to create an entire race of

his own kind. Now you know what happened during the two months

for which he was missing.

Finish gush; what happened next is history. He went back to the Project site

and told his siblings what he had seen and done in the world outside. When he

had finished they sat down facing each other and exercised their control of autonomic functions. With the whole day staff looking on and wondering what the hell, they stopped breathing, stopped their hearts, disrupted their synaptic systems, and died.

And that was the end of Project IG.

Why? Young Feller had brought back what he went for, so why?

Because in the city he had learned something of the real nature of

the world, in close-up, and encountered the forces against which

intelligence has no weapon. Having made his plans, he needed a

means of implementing them — resources of money, manpower and

equipment that only a government could finance.

So he went and asked for them. I mean it. In the innocence of a

logic which dealt only in commonsense he went to the man who,

according to his summation, could and would listen and assist. He

was refused.

The m anner of the refusal opened his eyes to facts. He was asked

what use he thought his kind could be in the world, and could give no

answer. He recognised himself as useless because he could not think

on this world’s level; he needed a world of his own and had reasoned

that the power that created him would help him to get it.

Now he knew that even if he succeeded in creating C Group

children they would be condemned to life as unwanted, resented

inhabitants of a madhouse.

The Group’s life was insupportable, with no escape except death.

So they escaped.

On the nursery floor

187

Whom had he asked? Why, a very powerful man indeed, one who

had survived five governments in and out of power to return to the

position he had held twenty years before as Minister for Science and

Development, the man who should be profoundly interested in the

furtherance of his own dreamchild.

Naturally, this information was withheld at the first interview but

I think he will talk about it now.

Go to him as soon as you leave here; he expects you. Don’t try to get

in touch with your organisation, whatever it is. If you do you will certainly be killed at once and my warning will be the last kindness ever done you.

Good morning. And good luck. One always needs a little luck.

Good woman, wicked woman, and does it matter which? Thank you,

ma’am, for the chill of your send-off. But, please, a last long gaze at the picture

Young Feller described (dictated?) and you painted. Marvellous, marvellous,

and I wish I could carry it in my mind forever. Alas, it was designed for a more

understanding brain than mine; post-internalism is beyond me. But I know a

thing or two about this example.

8

The journalist’s human interest story

W hat The Mob (my term) wanted was Young Feller’s legacy of biological notebooks detailing the genetic manipulation of intellect. They were sure the notebooks