“So our evolutionary advantage has turned unnoticed into a handicap.”
“Kate, I love you.”
“I know. I’m glad.”
At his secluded home in Massachusetts, Judge Virgil Horovitz, retired, and his housekeeper Alice Bronson—he was widowed—entertained house guests and used his computer terminal for the first time since his retirement. A gale had stripped most of the trees around his house of their gorgeous red-gold foliage; at night, frost made the fallen leaves crackle and rustle underfoot.
“But what the hell can we do with an insight like yours? We’ve had insights before, from social theorists and historians and politicians and preachers, and we’re in a mess in spite of all. The idea of turning the entire planet into a madhouse in the hope of triggering off some species-saving reflex—no, it’s out of the question. Suppose at some early stage of your scheme we hit a level where a billion people go collectively in-insane?”
“That’s the best we can look forward to, and I do mean the best, if the people at Tarnover are allowed their way.”
“I think you’re serious!”
“Oh, maybe it wouldn’t be a whole billion. But it could be half the population of North America. And a hundred and some million is enough, isn’t it?”
“How would it happen?”
“Theoretically at least, one of the forces operating on us consists in the capacity, which we don’t share with other animals, to elect whether or not we shall give way to an ingrained impulse. Our social history is the tale of how we learned to substitute conscious ethical behavior for simple instinct, right? On the other hand, it remains true that few of us are willing to admit how much influence our wild heritage exercises on our behavior. Not directly, because we’re not still wild, but indirectly, because society itself is a consequence of our innate predispositions.”
With a rueful chuckle, he added, “You know, one of the things I most regret about what’s happened is that I could have enjoyed my arguments with Paul Freeman. There was so much common ground between us. … But I didn’t dare. At all costs I had to shake his view of the world. Otherwise he’d never have toppled when Hartz pushed him.”
“Stop digressing, will you?”
“Sorry. Where were we? Oh, I was about to say that at Tarnover they’re mistakenly trying to postpone the moment where our reflexes take over. They ought to know that’s wrong. Freeman himself cited the best treatment for personality shock, which doesn’t use drugs or any other formal therapy, just liberates the victim to do something he’s always wanted and never achieved. In spite of evidence like that, though, they go on trying to collect the people most sensitive to our real needs so that they can isolate them from the world. Whereas what they ought to be doing is turning them loose in full knowledge of their own talent, so that when we reach the inevitable overload point our reflexes will work for instead of against our best interests.”
“I recall a point made in one of the Disasterville monographs. I think it was number 6. Stripped of the material belongings which had located them in society, a lot of refugees who formerly held responsible, status-high positions broke down into whining useless parasites. Leadership passed to those with more flexible minds—not only kids who hadn’t ossified yet, but adults who previously had been called unpractical, dreamers, even failures. The one thing they had in common seemed to be a free-ranging imagination, regardless of whether it was due to their youth or whether it had lasted into maturity and fettered them with too great a range of possibilities for them to settle to any single course of action.”
“How well I know that feeling. And wouldn’t an injection of imagination be good for our society right now? I say we’ve had an overdose of harsh reality. A bit of fantasy would act as an antidote.”
Near Cincinnati, Ohio, Helga Thorgrim Townes, dramatist, and her husband Nigel Townes, architect, had house guests and were debbed for an exceptional amount of time rented on the data-net. Slight snow was falling in the region, but as yet had not settled to any marked extent.
“I’m not sure that if I hadn’t met people from Tarnover I would believe you. If I can judge by them, though …”
“Be assured they’re typical. They’ve been systematically steered away from understanding of the single most important truth about mankind. It’s as though you were to comb the continent for the kindest, most generous, most considerate individuals you could find, and then spend years persuading them that because such attitudes are rare, they must be abnormal and should be cured.”
“What most important truth?”
“You tell me. You’ve known it all your life. You live by its compass.”
“Anything to do with my reason for getting interested in you in the first place? I noticed how hard you were trying to conform to a stock pattern. It seemed like a dreadful waste.”
“That’s it. One charge I made against Freeman which I won’t retract: I accused him of dealing not in human beings but in approximations to a preordained model of a human being. I really am glad he decided to give it up. Bad habit!”
“Then I know what you’re talking about. It’s the uncertainty principle.”
“Of course. The opposite of evil. Everything implied by that shopworn term ‘free will.’ Ever run across the phrase ‘the new conformity’?”
“Yes, and it’s terrifying. In an age when we have more choice than ever before, more mobility, more information, more opportunity to fulfill ourselves, how is it that people can prefer to be identical? The plug-in life-style makes me puke.”
“But the concept has been sold with such persistence, the majority of people feel afraid not to agree that it’s the best way of keeping track in a chaotic world. As it were: ‘Everybody else says it is—who am I to argue?’ ”
“I am I.”
“Tat tvam asi.”
During the six weeks that the process took, approximately thirteen percent of households owning domestic computer terminals made above-average use of the machines in excess of the normal variation plus-or-minus ten percent. This was up by less than one percent over last year’s figures and could be ascribed to the start of the academic year.
SHADOWS BEFORE
“Hey, those odds … they doubled kinda fast, didn’t they?”
“What do you mean you can’t raise him? He’s a five-star priority—his phone can’t be out. Try again.”
“Christ, look at this lot, will you? Can’t the twitches keep their minds made up two days together?”
“Funny to get this on a weekend, but … Oh, I’m not going to complain about the chance to pick our new location from a list this long. Makes a change, doesn’t it, from all the time going where we’re told and no option?”
“But—but Mr. Sullivan! You did authorize it! Or at any rate it has your code affixed!”
HOMER
“It feels so strange,” Kate said as the cab turned the corner of her home street. Her eyes darted from one familar detail to another.
“I’m not surprised. I’ve been back to places, of course, but never to resume the same role as when I was there before … nor shall I this time, of course. Any objections?”
“Reservations, maybe.” With a distracted gesture. “After having been so many different people in such a short time that I can’t remember all my names: Carmen, Violet, Chrissie …”
“I liked you specially when you were Lilith.”
She pulled a face at him. “I’m not joking! Knowing that here if anywhere I’m bound to be recognized, even though we made sure the croakers pulled their watch—I guess I wasn’t quite ready for it.”