The Pillars of Eternity

The stranger was making some sort of pitch, that much Boaz knew very well. But what it was he could want from him was a total mystery. He listened while the man continued in his mild, factual voice. He could see to it that Boaz got the required treatment, he said. He was prepared to take Boaz off Corsair and to a planet where friends of his, skilled doctors, would straighten out his body. But he was not making this offer only to help Boaz. There was something he wanted out of it, too – something that could be greatly to Boaz’s advantage if all went well. If not – well, the risk was a small one, it was unlikely that anything would go wrong that could not be put right. At the worst the experiment would fail, but they would still ensure that Boaz ended up with good bones. He promised Boaz that.

The price Boaz had to pay for these benefits was that he was to be used as an experimental subject. In fact, the orthopedic surgeons – bonemakers, the man called them – would replace Boaz’s entire skeleton. In place of his poor twisted bones, they would insert bones they had made themselves. These would be as good as natural bones in strength and durability, and they would contain marrow for making blood. But they would have a lot of silicon in them. Every gram of this silicon would comprise adp.

‘Do you know what adp is?’ the man asked him.

Boaz shook his head. The man shrugged. ‘Automatic data processing. It is what all machines work by. The servitor that brought you your meal. Every type of control system.’ He tapped his brow. ‘The implant in my skull that allows me to calculate beyond limit. In effect, your whole skeleton will consist of microprocessing. It will be like a second person within you, with new perceptions, new feelings, new abilities. Except that there will be no second person there. These benefits will be all yours, whenever you wish to make use of them.

‘This is the natural direction for human evolution to take. The brain is not large enough, even with adplants added. Silicon bones provide the room for extra processes, while still doubling as a skeleton. So far the technique has been developed using animals … the vital stage of adaptation to human beings has been delayed while we waited for one of us to volunteer as a subject … You, however, could solve our little problem. You are unusual; there are not many congenitally deformed people in the galaxy.’

‘Why’d you come to Corsair looking for someone like me? ’Cause there are no doctors here?’

‘I did not come to Corsair looking for anything. This spaceport is a stop-over point; I shall be here for a few hours waiting for my connection to Aurelius. It is by simple good fortune that I found you – good fortune for us both, I hope.’

Later, Boaz was to compare these silicon bones with the Boems, the crystalline adp that grew naturally. It had made him think that perhaps Boems weren’t sentient after all, any more than the bones were.

The sixteen-year-old beggar boy had not understood everything the bonemaker said to him. Later he was to find that fullness of explanation was an ethical consideration on the other’s part. To estimate another’s level of comprehension was arrogance, since it was nearly always to underestimate his mental capacity. Civilized standards required that all the facts be made available for the listener to understand or not, as the case may be.

In fact, the bonemaker’s talk of new perceptions went right over Boaz’s head. But he understood clearly that the stranger was offering to take him off Corsair, and besides that was offering him hope of a kind he had never dared to contemplate.

But why should he trust this chiton-wearing offworlder, a man whose class was despised in the warrens because of the ease and comfort of its life-style? Boaz had a reason, which he could not articulate but which told on him as he sat across from his host. All the man’s words and actions were careful and deliberate, yet they displayed no desire to impress. He had not once smiled at Boaz. He had not tried to apply persuasion. He had put facts, and had left it to Boaz to decide. It was the first time in his life that Boaz had been treated as an equal.

He decided.

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

The bonemaker’s name was Hyton. When asked his, the boy simply went even paler than usual and looked away. Hyton did not inquire again; and Boaz found that he could manage without a name. In a week they were on Aurelius, and here his horizons expanded swiftly.

His first change of perspective came almost immediately. He was confused by the unfailing courtesy shown him by the men into whose charge he had delivered himself. When the time came for physical examination, he flinched as they approached him, and could barely refrain from cowering.

The specialist (it was another, not Hyton) team leader smiled. ‘There was once a civilization, you know,’ he said to Boaz, ‘in which a malformed person was not at all an object of contempt. Rather, he was pitied, and given special deference.’

Boaz gaped.