“She’s with Galactic,” said Rosario. “No restrictions.” As he was walking across to the grav-chute, Tup said, “Miss Deffant could have a look at Maran.”
“Maran!” Liz was shocked into the exclamation.
Rosario stopped. He saw Liz’s distress, yet his face was hard.
It could have been the wild and bitter days of the Mad Wars all over again. Maran was the greatest cyberneticist of all time. The human mind: that was his workshop. Maran’s obsession was the inner depths. Liz shivered. She knew something of obsessions. In a small way, Buchanan was an example of what utter obsessiveness could do. Maran was the far extreme.
“When I think what he did—” she began.
“And what he hoped to do,” Rosario said.
“Come and see him,” said Tup, who looked from Liz to the ES 110’s commander. “You’ll never get the chance again.”
“No,” said Rosario. “No one will. Except those at the Rim.” She knew what he meant. A humane Galaxy had reverted to the oldest law of all. Those who could not live by a community’s code of ethics must leave. When there was no possibility of redemption, when a man or woman put himself or herself beyond any hope of forgiveness, the verdict was inevitable. To do more was barbarous. To do less was to imperil the community.
The aberrant were cast out.
“There’s nothing to be alarmed about, Miss Deffant,” said Tup. He was, perhaps, enjoying her discomfiture. “Maran’s unconscious. They all are. Coming, Miss Deffant?” Maran aboard the ship. Liz did not answer for some seconds. She was still absorbing the idea that he was somewhere in the cavernous depths of the prison-ship.
I can open a million years of evolution, was his simple, sublime claim. If a few must be sacrificed to show what the human mind is, then why not?
Liz caught herself gasping at the simple enormity of what he said. And at the center of it all, a terrifying logic.
“Don’t press her,” ordered Rosario.
“You won’t get the chance again, Miss Deffant,” Tup insisted. He grinned placatingly at Rosario. “She can tell them at Messier 16 that she saw Maran.”
“Don’t go down if you don’t want to.” Rosario said.
Liz’s thoughts were confused. She had seen the newscasts, with Maran stating his case so lucidly. There was a calmness about him that had fascinated all who saw him. And Maran was absolutely right in his main point.
Man was a unique phenomenon. There was only one intelligence in the whole of the Galaxy. Perhaps in the whole of creation. It must be understood, this thing called man, Maran had said. We must know the when and the how and the why of its beginnings!
When the gruesome details of Maran’s experiments were revealed, it was difficult to equate the calmness with the horrific things he had done to fellow human beings. We must gouge out the secrets of a million years, he had insisted. Find the beginning, understand the mechanism of transition from thing to man!
There was only one mystery, according to Maran. The mind of man. And he had devised his strange machines to investigate the human psyche. At first there were volunteers. The Enforcement Service moved in when the news of what had happened to them began to filter out. By that time, he had agents recruiting “helpers” in remote and primitive systems. Gullible men and women responded to his promises of wealth and mystical power. They were furious when the cruisers shipped them back to their barbaric planets. Maran had charisma. His simple, monumental message had enormous potency. Find the moment of man’s emergence to knowledge! Hold the moment, freeze it in time; examine, understand, develop it; and build the psyche into a cosmic engine! Liz recalled the arguments. To so many, they had become a catechism.
“Suppose he’s right,” she found herself saying to the two Enforcement Service crewmen.
“Maran right?” Rosario asked.
“Yes!”
“How, Miss Deffant? How right?” Tup wanted to know.
She could hardly put it into words, but she knew what she wanted to convey. Maran had pointed out that, despite all the attempts to communicate with supposed alien intelligences in other island universes, there had been no answers. Vast scanners ranged the depths of the Universe. They had sensed no coherent emissions. Despite the huge beamers which tried to tell far galaxies of the existence of the human race there had been no response. Couldn’t it be, Liz asked herself, that man was entirely alone in the Universe? Maran said so.
She collected her thoughts.
“I meant, what if he’s right about our being the only advanced life-form?” Before they could answer, she went on: “Oh, I know there have been theories about intelligent minerals operating on a time-scale too slow for us to understand—I even went for the notion of intelligent stars when they found that crazy double-star, but not now—you see, I’ve been around! I’ve been to all kinds of planets
—I’ve seen insect-eating lichens, walking plants, fossils that wake up once every millenium and then go back to sleep—but I’ve never come across anything that I can talk to! Nothing! And neither has anyone else!”
Tup was startled by the flow of words, but Rosario was not. New Settlements people had this enthusiasm. It came from their planetfalls on strange worlds which might soon echo to the building of towns. They had to be dreamers.
Liz realized that Rosario was waiting for her to go on. She saw his strong square face and looked at him for the first time as she would look at any handsome man. A stray recollection came back. Buchanan. Al Buchanan. He had looked so helpless the first time she had seen him. Not weak, but hurt. Not at all determined, like Rosario. But Al and Rosario were of a type. There was strength in the Enforcement Service commander’s steady gaze: he would make up his mind and act. Perhaps not as obsessively as Al. Other memories clamored for attention as she tried to marshal her inchoate arguments. Liz recalled small, intense private pleasures from the first days with Buchanan. A tiny victory when he said he would not run the recordings of the Court of Inquiry anymore. The feeling of dried leaves kicked up by their feet as they plowed through an autumn wood. The day they decided to freelance. There had been so many good days.
“Maran, Miss Deffant?” prompted Tup, who had not developed Rosario’s patience. She realized that they were politely waiting for her to make up her mind. The decision, and the answer, came:
“I’ll see him. Not because I want to tell anyone I’ve seen him. It’s just that I wonder about the man who thinks—believes—we’re unique.”
“Take Miss Deffant,” said Rosario. He smiled at Liz. “I think Maran could be right too.”
“Jack?” said Tup, in surprise. “You think he’s right?”
“Yes. Right about the uniqueness of the human mind. Maybe we are the only advanced form of life in the whole of the Universe. Maybe we should find out what caused this thing we call intellect or intelligence or soul.”
Liz hesitated. “You think Maran was right to try to solve the mystery—of how we started?”
“He was in too much of a hurry. If he’s right, if there is some way of understanding the processes of human thought and building on them, then we needn’t hurry. We’ve been around a long time. There’s no need to force the pace.”
“This way, Miss Deffant,” Tup said. He could not help adding: “This way to the Chamber of Horrors!” There was the usual grav-chute. At the bottom, Tup announced their arrival to an unseen robot servitor.
“I’m bringing a female visitor with full Security clearance,” he told it. To Liz he added: “Regulations. We have to comply.”