After that, however, he wasn’t quite as interested in genetics as he had begun to be. It could well have been coincidence, of course; most of the time he was hungrily rounding out his incomplete picture of the modern world, concentrating on history, sociology, political geography, comparative religion, linguistics and fiction in every possible form. His instructors were pleased and his fellow students were envious: here was one of the lucky ones, who was certain to go a long, long way.
There were graduates from Tarnover out in the larger world now. Not many. To build the student body up to its present total of seven hundred plus had taken nine years, and a good deal of the early work done here had gone to waste on the error side of the trial-and-error methods inevitable with any system as radically new as this. That was over. Sometimes a graduate returned for a short visit and expressed pleasure at the smoothness with which the establishment now ran, and told half-sad, half-funny stories about mistakes made when he or she was still a student. Most centered on the original assumption that an element of rivalry was indispensable if the people here were to function at maximum efficiency. On the contrary; one of the basic characteristics of a wise person is the ability to see how competition wastes time and effort. Some ludicrous contradictions had arisen before that problem was straightened out.
Existence at Tarnover was isolated. Vacations were naturally permitted—many of the students had living families, unlike Nickie. Pretty often one of his friends would take him home over Christmas or Thanksgiving or Labor Day. But he was well aware of the danger inherent in talking freely. No formal oath was administered, no security clearance issued, but all the kids were conscious, indeed proud, that their country’s survival might depend on what they were doing. Besides, being a guest in another person’s home reminded him uncomfortably of the old days. So he never accepted an invitation lasting more than a week, and always returned thankfully to what he now regarded as his ideal environment: the place where the air was constantly crackling with new ideas, yet the day-to-day pattern of life was wholly stable.
Naturally there were changes. Sometimes a student, less often an instructor, went away without warning. There was a phrase for that; it was said they had “bowed out”—bowed in the sense of an overstressed girder, or a tree before a gale. One instructor resigned because he was not allowed to attend a conference in Singapore. No one sympathized. People from Tarnover did not attend foreign congresses. They rarely went to those in North America. There were reasons not to be questioned.
By the time he was seventeen Nickie felt he had made up for most of his childhood. He had learned affection, above all. It wasn’t just that he’d had girls—he was a presentable young man now, and a good talker, and according to what he was told an enterprising lover. More important was the fact that the permanence of Tarnover had allowed him to go beyond merely liking adults. There were many instructors to whom he had become genuinely attached. It was almost as though he had been born late into a vast extended family. He had more kinfolk, more dependable, than ninety percent of the population of the continent.
And then the day came when …
Most of the education imparted here was what you taught yourself with the help of computers and teaching machines. Logically enough. Knowledge that you wanted to acquire before you knew where to look for it sticks better than knowledge you never even suspected in advance. But now and then a problem arose where personal guidance was essential. It had been two years since he’d dug into biology at all, and in connection with a project he was planning in the psychology of communication he needed advice on the physiological aspects of sensory input. The computer remote in his room was not the same one he had had when he arrived, but a newer and more efficient model which by way of a private joke he had baptized Roger, after Friar Bacon of the talking head.
It told him within seconds that he should call on Dr. Joel Bosch in the biology section tomorrow at 1000. He had not met Dr. Bosch, but he knew about him: a South African, an immigrant to the States seven or eight years ago, who had been accepted on the staff of Tarnover after long and thorough loyalty evaluation, and reputedly was doing excellent work.
Nickie felt doubtful. One had heard about South Africans … but on the other hand he had never met one, so he suspended judgment.
He arrived on time, and Bosch bade him enter and sit down. He obeyed more by feel than sight, for his attention had instantly been riveted by—by a thing in one corner of the light and airy office.
It had a face. It had a torso. It had one normal-looking hand set straight in at the shoulder, one withered hand on the end of an arm straw-thin and almost innocent of muscle, and no legs. It rested in a system of supports that held its overlarge head upright, and it looked at him with an expression of indescribable jealousy. It was like a thalidomide parody of a little girl.
Portly, affable, Bosch chuckled at his visitor’s reaction. “That’s Miranda,” he explained, dropping into his own chair. “Go ahead, stare all you like. She’s used to it—or if she isn’t by now, then she’s damned well going to have to get used to it.”
“What. …?” Words failed him.
“Our pride and joy. Our greatest achievement. And you’re accidentally privileged to be among the first to know about it. We’ve kept her very quiet because we didn’t know how much input she could stand, and if we’d let even the faintest hint leak out people would have been standing on line from here to the Pacific, demanding a chance to meet her. Which they will, but in due time. We’re adjusting her to “the world by slow degrees, now we know she really is a conscious being. Matter of fact, she probably has at least an average IQ, but it took us a while to figure out a way of letting her talk.”
Staring, hypnotized, Nickie saw that a sort of bellows mechanism was pumping slowly in and out alongside her shrunken body, and a connection ran from it to her throat.
“Of course even if she hadn’t survived this long she would still have been a milestone on the road,” Bosch pursued. “Hence her name—Miranda, ‘to be wondered at.’ ” He gave a broad grin. “We built her! That’s to say, we combined the gametes under controlled conditions, we selected the genes we wanted and shoved them to the right side during crossover, we brought her to term in an artificial womb—yes, we literally built her. And we’ve learned countless lessons from her already. Next time the result should be independently viable instead of relying on all that gadgetry.” An airy wave.
“Right, to business. I’m sure you don’t mind her listening in. She won’t understand what we’re talking about, but she’s here, as I said, to accustom her to the idea that there are lots of people in the world instead of just three or four attendants taking care of her. According to the computers you want a fast rundown on …”
Mechanically Nickie explained the reason for his visit, and Bosch obliged him with the titles of a dozen useful recent papers on relevant subjects. He barely heard what was said. When he left the office he stumbled rather than walked back to his room.
Alone that night, and sleepless, he asked himself a question that was not on the program, and agonized his way to its answer.
Consciously he was aware that not everyone would have displayed the same reaction. Most of his friends would have been as delighted as Bosch, stared at Miranda with interest instead of dismay, asked scores of informed questions and complimented the team responsible for her.
But for half his life before the age of twelve, for six of his most formative years, Nickie Haflinger had been more furniture than person and willy-nilly had been forced to like it.
As though he had come upon the problem in a random test of the type that formed a standard element in his education—training people to be taken by surprise and still get it right was an integral part of Tarnover thinking—he saw it, literally saw it, in his mind’s eye. It was spelled out on the buff paper they used for “this section to be answered in terms of the calculus of morality,” marking it off from the green used for administration and politics, the pink for social prognostication, and so on.