The Seed of Evil

“No … I’ve lived a static sort of life so far. Only now and then becoming an aberrant and weirdy kid!” He grinned, and glanced around him. “It’s only for seven months, then they pay my fare back.” He grinned again. “They’ll go to any expense to get labour out there.”

Mercer nodded, following his own thoughts. He remembered that when Brian had been a fourteen-year-old boy he had started going around with a preoccupied air, as though working out some grave and fundamental problem. As it happened, this was the case, for the inquiry into philosophy and science had for him taken a sudden turn, from being abstract and speculative, into something immediate, personal and urgent.

How was anything known? Only in terms of something else. And how was that something else understood? Only in further terms. And so on, along the chain, until the unknown was reckoned in terms of the unknown. The end result of all reasoning was still ignorance.

This could make a joke of the philosopher. Just the same, the yearnings of the human mind could not be abandoned. Brian had turned all his attention to the problem of finding out whether the mind could surmount its obstacle.

He had always been uncommunicative about this aspect of things. Mercer wanted to know, without overtly prying, whether any progress had been made.

“Things haven’t gone too well for me,” Brian suddenly admitted in a serious tone. “It’s pretty tedious to have to make a living. As for other things, well. …”

Mercer waited.

“So what?” Brian continued in a burst of exasperation. “All that happens is that you die in the end and that’s that.”

“Yes.” Mercer could think of no other reply.

“Come on,” Brian said after a moment, “let’s go and look at the vision screens.”

He stood up. Mercer followed him out of the lounge, across a plush foyer, and through to the vision room.

Here, on television screens, passengers could see the depths of space through which the giant starship was passing. The six screens showed fore, aft, and the four quarters, and were oval-shaped, each about three feet down the long axis.

The vision room was like a picture gallery. The screens were spaced on the walls like paintings, and it was impossible to gain an overall impression. Each screen had to be viewed separately.

The starship was travelling near the edge of the galaxy, and the pictures were awesome enough. One showed what seemed to be a huge rift in the stars, really a region of obscuring gas and dust. Another showed a clearer view of the blazing galactic lens. Yet another pointed beyond the rim, into darkness. This screen was little more than a dark blank, with a few dim points of light.

It thrilled Brian to think that these scenes were being relayed from outside the hull, but beautiful as they were, they were only images. He had seen the same, many times, in cinemas and on television on Earth.

“This is worth seeing.”

“Yes.”

Brian leaned towards Mercer confidentially. “There’s something that bothers me. All these interstellar vessels have unbroken hulls. There are no direct vision ports to the outside. Why?”

Mercer thought about it for a moment. “I suppose it’s more convenient. When I was on Kaddan II I went beneath the Sulphur Sea in one of those big submarines. There were no vision ports on that, either.”

“Under ten thousand atmospheres I wouldn’t want there to be any. There are no engineering problems like that in space.”

“I suppose it’s just convenience,” repeated Mercer.

“There’s more to it than that. Nobody’s allowed to look outside. Not even the crew. All observations are made indirectly by externally mounted instruments. Yet just you try to find out why! There must be some kind of official phobia about space, or something.”

“What difference does it make?” Mercer said. “Perception is indirect anyway. You record the outside world with your sense organs and then present the recordings somewhere inside your brain, just like television. These screens are the internal end of the ship’s senses.”

“It’s still funny,” Brian muttered stubbornly.

“Well, it’s no use complaining. There’s bound to be a reason. It’s a matter of design.”

Brian gave up the argument. Mercer, he realised, was solidly trained scientifically. He had faith that the starship moved implacably through the void with all its affairs perfectly arranged. Mentally he was dominated by the fateful Declaration of Moscow issued by the Final Comintern of 2150 A.D.

The Comintern, from which present civilisation had sprung, had based science firmly on the Control of Nature by Man.

Brian recognised the achievements of Scientocratic Communism established at that time, and which had governed Earth ever since. But he often wondered about that particular item of doctrine, even though it had such a firm hold on the public mind. He wondered how seriously it was taken by the Inner Scientocrats themselves, two centuries later.

They left the vision room and wandered through the corridors for half an hour or so. Then Mercer announced his decision to go to bed.