Mary thought about that. Yes, most slave owners had ignored the issue, but surely some people of conscience, caught up in a society driven by bought-and-sold human beings, must have had qualms and yet had they consoled themselves with the knowledge that the people they were mistreating would be rewarded for their suffering after death? Yes, the Nazi leaders were pure evil, but how many of the rank and file, following orders to exterminate Jews, had managed to sleep at night by believing the freshly dead were now in paradise?
Nor did it have to be anything so grandiose. God was the great compensator: if you were wronged in life, it would be made up for in deaththe fundamental principle that had allowed parents to send their children off to die in war after countless war. Indeed, it didnt really matter if you ruined someone elses life, because that person might well go to Heaven. Oh, you yourself might be dispatched to Hell, but nothing you did to anyone else really hurt them in the long run. This existence was mere prologue; eternal life was yet to come.
And, indeed, in that infinite existence, God would make up for whatever had been done to to her.
And that bastard, that bastard who had attacked her, would burn.
No, it didnt matter if she never reported the crime; there was no way he could escape his ultimate judge.
But but But what about your world? What happens to criminals there?
Bleep.
People who break laws, said Mary. People who intentionally hurt others.
Ah, said Ponter. We have little problem with that anymore, having cleansed most bad genes from our gene pool generations ago.
What? exclaimed Mary.
Serious crimes were punished by sterilization of not just the offender but also anyone who shared fifty percent of the offenders genetic materiaclass="underline" brothers and sisters, parents, offspring. The effect was twofold. First, it cleansed those bad genes from our society, and
How would nonagriculturalists stumble onto genetics? I mean, we figured it out through plant cultivation and animal husbandry.
We may not have bred animals or plants for food, but we did domesticate wolves to help us in hunting. I have a dog named Pabo that I am very fond of. Wolves were quite susceptible to controlled breeding; the results were obvious.
Mary nodded; that sounded reasonable enough. You said the sterilization had a twofold effect on your society?
Oh, yes. Besides directly eliminating the faulty genes, it gave families a strong incentive to make sure none of their own members ran seriously afoul of society.
I suppose it would at that, said Mary.
It did indeed, said Ponter. You, as a geneticist, surely know that the only immortality that really exists is genetic. Life is driven by genes wanting to ensure their own reproduction, or to protect existing copies of themselves. So our justice was aimed at genes, not at people. Our society is mostly free of crime now because our justice system directly targeted that which really drives all life: not individuals, not circumstances, but genes. We made it so that the best survival strategy for genes is to obey the law.
Richard Dawkins would approve, I imagine, said Mary. But you were speaking of this this sterilization practice in the past tense. Has it ended?
No, but there is little modern need.
You were that successful? No one commits serious crimes anymore?
Hardly anyone does so because of genetic disorders. There are, of course, also biochemical disorders that cause antisocial behavior, but those are eminently treatable with drugs. Only rarely does sterilization still need to be invoked.
A society without crime, said Mary, shaking her head slowly in amazement. That must be She paused, wondering how much she wanted to let her guard down, then: That must be fabulous. But she frowned. Surely, though, a lot of crime must go unsolved. I mean, if you cant figure out who did something, then the perpetrator must go unpunishedor, if he had a biochemical disorder, untreated.
Ponter blinked. Unsolved crimes?
Yes, you know: crimes for which the policebleepor whatever you have for law enforcement, cant figure out who did it.
There are no such crimes.
Marys back stiffened. Like most Canadians, she was against capital punishmentprecisely because it was possible to execute the wrong person. All Canadians lived with the shame of the wrongful imprisonment of Guy Paul Morin, who had spent ten years rotting in jail for a murder he didnt commit; of Donald Marshall, Jr., who spent eleven years incarcerated for a murder he, too, didnt commit; of David Milgaard, who spent twenty-three years jailed for a rape-murder he also was innocent of. Castration was the least of the punishments Mary would like to see her own rapist subjected tobut if, in her quest for vengeance, she had it done to the wrong person, how could she live with herself? And what about the Marshall case? No, it wasnt all Canadians who lived with the shame of that; it was white Canadians. Marshall was a Mikmaq Indian whose protestations of innocence in a white court, it seemed, werent believed simply because he was an Indian.
Still, maybe she was thinking now more like an atheist than a true believer. A believer should hold that Milgaard, Morin, and Marshall were eventually going to receive their just, heavenly reward, making up for whatever theyd endured here on Earth. After all, Gods own son had been executed unfairly, even by the standards of Rome; Pontius Pilate didnt think Christ guilty of the crime with which hed been charged.
But Ponters world was beginning to sound worse even than Pilates court: the brutality of forced sterilizations with an absolute belief that youd always correctly found the guilty party. Mary suppressed a shudder. How can you be certain youve convicted the right person? More to the point, how can you be sure you havent convicted the wrong person?
Because of the alibi archives, said Ponter, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The what? said Mary.
Ponter, still seated next to her on the couch in Reubens office, held up his left arm and rotated it so that the inside of his wrist faced toward her. The strange digits on the Companion winked at Mary. The alibi archives, he said again. Hak constantly transmits information about my location, as well as three-dimensional images of exactly what I am doing. Of course, it has been out of touch with its receiver since I came here.
This time Mary didnt suppress the shudder. You mean you live in a totalitarian society? Youre constantly under surveillance?
Surveillance? said Ponter, his eyebrow climbing over his browridge. No, no, no. No one is monitoring the transmitted data.
Mary frowned, confused. Then whats done with it?
It is recorded in my alibi archive.
And what, exactly, is that?
A computerized memory archive; a block of material onto whose crystalline lattices we imprint unalterable recordings.
But if no one is monitoring it, whats it for?
Am I misusing your word alibi? said Hak, in the female voice it used when talking on its own behalf. I understood an alibi to be proof that one was somewhere else when an act was committed.
Um, yes, said Mary. Thats an alibi.
Well, then, continued Hak. Ponters archive provides him with an irrefutable alibi for any crime he might be accused of.