Evolution

A short, potbellied man in what might once have been called a Hawaiian shirt approached Joan shyly. Bald, perspiring heavily, with an apparently habitual grin on his face, he wore a button-badge that cycled images of Mars, the new NASA robot lander, an orange sky. Joan, as a small child, might have called him a nerd. But he was no older than thirty-five. A second-generation nerd, then. He held out his hand. "Ms. Useb? My name is Ian Maughan. I’m from JPL. Uh—"

"The Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA. I remember your name, of course." Joan struggled to her feet and shook his hand. "I’m delighted you agreed to come. Especially at such a time in your mission."

"It is going well, thank the great Ju-Ju," he said. He tipped up his button-badge. "These are live images, live net of the time delay from Mars, of course. Johnnie has already set up his fuel plant and is working on metal extraction."

"Iron, from that rusty Mars rock."

"You got it."

"Johnnie," the Mars lander, was officially named for John von Neumann, the twentieth-century American thinker credited with coming up with the notion of universal replicators, machines that, given the right raw materials, could manufacture anything — including copies of themselves. "Johnnie" was a technological trial, a prototype replicator. Its ultimate goal was, in fact, to make a copy of itself from the raw materials of the planet itself.

"He’s proving an incredible hit with the public," Maughan said with a shy smile. "People just like to watch. I think it’s the sense of purpose, of achievement as he completes one component after another."

"Reality TV from Mars."

"Like that, yeah. I can’t say we planned for the ratings we’re getting. Even after seventy years, NASA still doesn’t think PR very well. But the attention’s sure welcome."

"When do you think Johnnie will have, umm, given birth? Before my own attempt at replication?"

Maughan forced a laugh, unsurprisingly embarrassed at Joan’s mention of her human biology. "Well, it’s possible. But he’s proceeding at his own pace. That’s the beauty of this project, of course. Johnnie is autonomous. Now that he’s up there, he doesn’t need anything from the ground. Since he and his sons won’t cost us another dime, this is actually a low-budget project."

Joan thought, Sons!

"But Johnnie is more an engineering stunt than science," said Alyce Sigurdardottir. She had returned with plastic cups of cola for herself and Joan. "Isn’t that true?"

Maughan smiled, easily enough. Joan realized belatedly that despite his appearance he must actually be one of JPL’s more PR-literate employees; otherwise he wouldn’t be here. "I can’t deny that," he said. "But that’s our way. At NASA, the engineering and the science have always had to proceed hand in hand." He turned back to Joan. "I’m honored you asked me here, though I’m still not sure why. My grasp of biology is kind of flaky. I’m basically a computer scientist. And Johnnie is just another space probe, a hunk of silicon and aluminum."

Joan said, "This conference isn’t just about biology. I wanted the best and brightest minds in many fields to come here and get in touch with each other. We’ve got to learn to think in a new way."

Alyce shook her head. "And for all my skepticism about this specific project, I think you underestimate yourself, Dr. Maughan. Think about it. You come into the world naked. You take what the Earth gives you — metal, oil — and you mold it, make it smart, and hurl it across space to another world. NASA’s image has always been dismally poor. But what you actually do is so — romantic."

Maughan hid behind a weak joke. "Gee, ma’am, I’ll have to invite you along to my next career review."

The lounge was continuing to fill up with passengers. Joan said, "Does anybody know what’s happening?"

"It’s the protesters," Ian Maughan said. "They are lobbing rocks into the airport compound. The police are pushing them back, but it’s a mess. They let us land, but it’s not safe for our baggage to be retrieved right now, or for us to leave the airport."

"Terrific," Joan said. "So we’re going to be under siege all through the conference."

Alyce asked, "Who’s involved?"

"Mostly the Fourth World." An umbrella group, based on a splinter Christian sect, that claimed to represent the interests of the global underclass: the so-called Fourth World, people with less visibility even than the nations and groupings that made up the Third World — the poorest and most excluded, beneath the radar of the rich northern and western nations. "They think Pickersgill himself is in Australia."

Joan felt a flickering of unease. British-born Gregory Pickersgill was the charismatic leader of the central cult; the worst kind of trouble — sometimes lethal — followed him around. Deliberately she put the worry aside. "Let’s leave it to the police. We have a conference to run."

"And a planet to save," said Ian Maughan, smiling.

"Damn right."