Achilles choice

Jillian said, “You thought you were a machine, didn’t you?”

Saturn nodded quietly.

“That’s why you buried yourself in a world of mathematics. In retrospect, it makes sense that the whole thing is coming apart.”

Again, the almost imperceptible dip of the chin.

“But you still dream, don’t you, Saturn? You still desire? You think you should be free of the flesh, of all this, and you’re not, and you don’t know what to make of it.”

The tube car was silent, save for a distant hiss of air through the ventilation system. “I have access to all the information in the world,” he said. “And I can’t answer that question.”

“Where do I come in? Do I? Is it that you want to be told that you have a soul?”

He waved it away. “You can’t answer that question. This isn’t about me, Jillian-“

“Isn’t it? Has it ever been about anything else?”

“It’s about saving humanity-“

“Which you are a part of, like it or not.”

He glared at her. “I deal in what is quantifiable, Jillian. I never wonder how many angels can dance on the head of a pin-that question being, incidentally, an exercise in quantum mechanics-“

“I’m not interested in a lecture,” she said flatly.

“Jillian, shall I turn up the heat?”

“Please.” Quite suddenly, she was freezing. And he’d known before she did!

“Done. I wonder,” he said, “if you realize how many ways there are to be human. Maoris, Nazis, Mormons, abos in the Australian outback, slaves and slavers, drug cultures in the United States in the sixties and then the eighties, don’t even start to cover it. There are all the dead cultures, too. The French and Soviet reigns of terror. Ancient half-humans who ate shellfish and each other. Mental hospitals. Christian sects wherein the men castrated themselves. Rosicrucians. The Velvet Underground.

“You could take most of the aliens in science fiction and match their lifestyles to somebody. I remember a critic who thought Bram Stoker’s Dracula was about syphilis. Or take Ursula Le Gum’s-“

”I haven’t-“

“You did, too. Third year of high school, English Lit. You wrote a paper, ‘Vampirism as a Venereal Metaphor.’ It was quite explicit, and led to what you described to your diary as an ‘affair of incandescent intensity, sufficient to set the moon ablaze’ with your Lit tutor.” He grinned happily, an innocent voyeur. “You read Le Gum, too.”

Her face was burning. “How dare you! Do you think peeping into the emotions of real human beings makes you more alive? You’re a ghoul, Saturn. You don’t even have the courage to lie down and die.” She felt violated. Saturn had pried into Beverly! He must know everything, every hope and prayer, every childhood memory. How could he?

“Are we done? Le Gum, The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Gum’s aliens are a branch of the human race, but they’re neuter most of the time, and when they develop a gender you can’t guess which one-” She remembered then, and he saw it. “Okay. Good science fiction, but do you think I can’t find people like that in Oakland?

“But the other side is, whenever I wonder about something, it starts a subprogram. I’ve got access to most of human knowledge.

“Twenty-six years ago I wondered if I was human. I had an answer with ninety-one percent confidence in just under two minutes. In ten minutes I had four nines of confidence. Every known human culture had been explored. Le Gum’s aliens were human, Dracula was human, but by any reasonable standard, I’m not.”

“Imagine my surprise,” Jillian said bitterly.

“Rise above it, Jillian. More is at stake here than your feelings.”

“They’re what make me human!”

“Having them, or wallowing in them? I thought you prized discipline. Strength. Achievement. Emotional control makes it possible. Do you see the implications of what I said? Maybe the Council’s not human, either?”

“So you keep replacing them. Your children. Saturn.”

”You got it.”

“How long? Until you get it right?”

“I’m getting closer. The younger Linked are staying human longer. I need to keep them under control, too. You spoke of motives. I don’t trust theirs. Mine you must have guessed-No? All right, Jillian, what would you do if you were me?”

She felt bone-weary. It was all too much, too quick. Her head was reeling, and she yawned mightily. “Sleep for a week.”

“Coffee under the seat. Jillian, I can’t do this twice. The Council can see patterns. I won’t make you a target, Jillian. This conversation ends at Denver.”

Fair enough.

Under the seat was a wrinkled plastic bag. It held a small thermos and a Bullocks sales slip and a package of oat bran cookies with several missing. My God, he’s thorough. The coffee was black and sweet, not too hot. She could feel it pulling her awake.

She said, “Kill them all and then suicide.” She surprised herself that time: there wasn’t any bitterness in that suggestion.

Again Saturn answered instantly. “What about the equipment? Software, computers, never-linked sensing devices, tailored medical procedures like Boost, everything that made us what we are: what about that? If the capability is there, there will be more Linked.”