Beyond This Horizon (6 page)

“Not at all.
I know your chart
. I counted not only on your motor reactions, but your intelligence. Felix, your intelligence rating entitles you to the term genius even in these days.”

There followed a long silence. Mordan broke it. “Well?”

“You’ve said all you have to say?”

“For the moment.”

“Very well, then, I’ll speak my piece. You haven’t said anything that convinces me. I wasn’t aware that you planners took such an interest in my germ plasm, but you didn’t tell me anything else that I did not already know. My answer is ‘no’—”

“But—”

“My turn—Claude. I’ll tell you why. Conceding that I am a superior survival type—I don’t argue that; it’s true. I’m smart and I’m able and I know it. Even so, I know of no reason why the human race
should
survive…other than the fact that their make-up insures that they will. But there’s no sense to the whole bloody show. There’s no point to being alive at all. I’m damned if I’ll contribute to continuing the comedy.”

He paused. Mordan waited, then said slowly, “Don’t you enjoy life, Felix?”

“I certainly do,” Hamilton answered emphatically. “I’ve got a twisted sense of humor, and everything amuses me.”

“Then isn’t life worth living for itself alone?”

“It is for me. I intend to live as long as I can and I expect to enjoy most of it. But do most people enjoy life? I doubt it. As near as I can tell from outward appearances it’s about fourteen to one against it.”

“Outward appearances may be deceiving. I am inclined to think that most people are happy.”

“Prove it!”

Mordan smiled. “You’ve got me. We can measure most things about the make-up of a man, but we’ve never been able to measure that. However—don’t you expect your own descendants to inherit your zest for living?”

“Is it inheritable?” Hamilton asked suspiciously.

“Well, truthfully, we don’t know. I can’t point to a particular spot on a particular chromosome and say, ‘There lies happiness.’ It’s more subtle than blue eyes versus brown eyes. But I want to delve into this more deeply. Felix, when did you begin to suspect that life was not worth living?”

Hamilton stood up and paced nervously, feeling in himself such agitation as he had not felt since adolescence. He knew the answer to that question. He knew it well. But did he wish to bare it to this stranger?

No one speaks to a little child of chromosome charts. There was nothing to mark Hamilton Felix out from other infants in the first development center he could remember. He was a nobody, kindly and intelligently treated, but of importance to no one but himself. It had dawned on him slowly that his abilities were superior. A bright child is dominated in its early years by other, duller children, simply because they are older, larger, better informed. And there are always those remote omniscient creatures, the grown ups.

He was ten—or was it eleven?—when he began to realize that in competition he usually excelled. After that he tried to excel, to be conspicuously superior, cock-o’-the-walk. He began to feel the strongest of social motivations, the desire to be appreciated. He knew now what he wanted to be when he “grew up.”

The other fellows talked about what they wanted to do. (“I’m going to be a rocket pilot when
I
grow up.” “So am I.” “
I’m
not. My father says a business man can hire all the rocket pilots he wants.” “He couldn’t hire
me
.” “He could
so
.”)

Let them talk. Young Felix knew what he wanted to do. He would be an encyclopedic synthesist. All the really great men were synthesists. The whole world was their oyster. Who stood a chance of being elected to the Board of Policy but a synthesist? What specialist was there who did not, in the long run, take his orders from a synthesist? They were the leaders, the men who knew everything, the philosopher-kings of whom the ancients had dreamed.

He kept his dream to himself. He appeared to be pulling out of his pre-adolescent narcissist period and to be undergoing the social integration of adolescence with no marked trouble. His developers were unaware that he was headed for an insuperable obstacle. Youths seldom plan to generalize their talents; it takes more subtle imagination than they usually possess to see romance in being a policy former.

Hamilton looked at Mordan. The man’s face invited confidence. “You’re a synthesist, aren’t you? You aren’t a geneticist.”

“Naturally. I couldn’t specialize in the actual techniques. That takes a lifetime.”

“The best geneticist on your staff can’t hope to sit where you are sitting.”

“Of course not. They wouldn’t wish to.”

“Could I become your successor? Go ahead—answer me. You know my chart.”

“No, you couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“You know why. You have an excellent memory, more than adequate for any other purpose, but it’s not an eidetic memory. A synthesist must have complete memory in order to be able to cover the ground he must cover.”

“And without it,” Hamilton added, “a man can never be recognized as a synthesist. He just isn’t one, any more than a man can claim to be an engineer who can’t solve fourth degree equations in his head. I wanted to be a synthesist and I wasn’t equipped for it. When it was finally pounded into my head that I couldn’t take first prize, I wasn’t interested in second prize.”

“Your son could be a synthesist.”

Hamilton shook his head. “It doesn’t matter any more. I still have the encyclopedic viewpoint, but I wouldn’t want to trade places with you. You asked me when and how it was that I first came to the conclusion that life doesn’t mean anything. I’ve told you how I first began to have my doubts, but the point is: I still have ’em.”

“Wait,” Mordan put in. “You still have not heard the whole story. It was planned that eidetic memory would be incorporated in your line either in your generation, or in your father’s. Your children will have it, if you co-operate. There is still something lacking which needs to be added and will be added. I said you were a survival type. You are—except for one thing. You don’t want children. From a biological standpoint that is as contra-survival as a compulsion to suicide. You got that tendency from your dexter great-grandfather. The tendency had to be accepted at the time as he was dead before his germ plasm was used and we hadn’t much supply in the bank to choose from. But it will be corrected at this linkage. Your children will be anxious to have children—I can assure you of that.”

“What’s that to me?” Hamilton demanded. “Oh, I don’t doubt that you can do it. You can wind ’em up and make ’em run. You can probably eliminate my misgivings and produce a line that will go on happily breeding for the next ten million years. That still doesn’t make it make sense. Survival! What for? Until you can give me some convincing explanation why the human race should go on at all, my answer is ‘no’.” He stood up.

“Leaving?” asked Mordan.

“If you will excuse me.”

“Aren’t you interested in knowing something about the woman whom we believe is suitable for your line?”

“Not particularly.”

“I choose to interpret that as permission,” Mordan answered affably. “Look over there.” He touched a control on his desk; Hamilton looked where he had been directed to. A section of the wall faded away and gave place to a stereo scene. It was as if they were looking out through an open window. Before them lay a garden swimming pool, its surface freshly agitated…by diving, apparently, for a head broke the surface of the water. The swimmer took three easy strokes toward the pick-up, and climbed out on the bank with effortless graceful strength. She rolled to her knees, stood up bare and lovely. She stretched and laughed, apparently from sheer animal spirits, and glided out of the picture. “Well?” asked Mordan.

“She’s comely, but I’ve seen others.”

“It’s not necessary that you ever lay eyes on her,” the Moderator added hastily. “She’s your fifth cousin, by the way. The combination of your charts will be simple.” He snapped off the scene, replaced it with a static picture. “Your chart is on the right; hers is on the left.” Two additional diagrams then appeared, one under his, one under hers. “Those are the optimum haploid charts for your respective gametes. They combine so—” He touched another control; a fifth chart formed itself in the center of the square formed by the four others.

The charts were not pictures of chromosomes, but were made up of the shorthand used by genetic technicians to represent the extremely microscopic bits of living matter which are the arbiters of human make-up. Each chromosome was represented by a pattern which more nearly resembled a spectrogram than any other familiar structure. But the language was a language of experts; to a layman the charts were meaningless.

Even Mordan could not read the charts unassisted. He depended on his technicians to explain them to him when necessary. Thereafter his unfailing memory enabled him to recall the significance of the details.

One thing alone was evident to the uninstructed eye: the two upper charts, Hamilton’s and the girl’s, contained twice as many chromosome patterns—forty-eight to be exact—as the charts of the gametes underneath them. But the chart of the proposed offspring contained forty-eight representations of chromosomes—twenty-four from each of its parents.

Hamilton ran his eye over the charts with interest, an interest he carefully repressed. “Intriguing, I’m sure,” he said indifferently. “Of course I don’t understand it.”

“I’d be glad to explain it to you.”

“Don’t bother. It’s hardly worth while, is it?”

“I suppose not.” Mordan cleared the controls; the pictures snapped off. “I must ask you to excuse me, Felix. Perhaps we can talk another day.”

“Certainly, if you wish.” He glanced at his host in surprise, but Mordan was as friendly and as smilingly urbane as ever. Hamilton found himself in the outer office a few moments later. They had exchanged goodbyes with all the appropriate intimate formality of name-friends; nevertheless Hamilton felt a vague dissatisfaction, a feeling of incompleteness, as if the interview had terminated before it was over. To be sure, he had said no, but he had not said it in all the detail he had wished to.

Mordan went back to his desk and switched the charts on again. He studied them, recalling all that he had been taught about them and dwelling with interest on the middle one.

A chime played the phrase announcing his chief technical assistant. “Come in, Martha,” he invited without looking around.

“I’m in, Chief,” she replied almost at once.

“Ah—so you are,” he answered, turning to her.

“Got a cigaret?”

“Help yourself.” She did so from the jeweled container on his desk, inhaled it into life, and settled down comfortably… She was older than he, iron grey, and looked as competent as she was. Her somber laboratory coveralls were in marked contrast to the dignified dandyism of his costume, but they fitted her character.

“Hamilton just left, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“When do we start?”

“Mmmm… How would the second Tuesday of next week do?”

She raised her brows. “As bad as that?”

“I’m afraid so. He said so. I kicked him out—gently—before he had time to rationalize himself into a position from which he would not care to back down later.”

“Why did he refuse? Is he in love?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the catch?” She got up, went to the screen and stared at Hamilton’s chart, as if she might detect the answer there.

“Mmmm… He posed me a question which I must answer correctly—else he will not co-operate.”

“Huh? What was the question?”

“I’ll ask you. Martha, what is the meaning of life?”

“What! Why, what a stupid question!”

“He did not ask it stupidly.”

“It’s a psychopathic question, unlimited, unanswerable, and, in all probability, sense free.”

“I’m not so sure, Martha.”

“But—Well, I won’t attempt to argue with you outside my own field. But it seems to me that ‘meaning’ is a purely anthropomorphic conception. Life simply
is
. It exists.”

“He used the idea anthropomorphically. What does life mean to men, and why should he, Hamilton, assist in its continuance? Of course I couldn’t answer him. He had me. And he proposed to play Sphinx and not let us proceed until I solve his riddle.”

“Fiddlesticks!” She snapped the cigaret away savagely. “What does he think this clinic is—a place to play word games? A man should not be allowed to stand in the way of racial progress. He doesn’t own the life in his body. It belongs to all of us—to the race. He’s a fool.”

“You know he’s not, Martha.” He pointed to the chart.

“No,” she admitted, “he’s not a fool. Nevertheless, he should be required to co-operate. It’s not as if it would hurt him or inconvenience him in any way.”

“Tut, tut, Martha. There’s a little matter of constitutional law.”

“I know. I know. I abide by it, but I don’t have to worship it. Granted, it’s a wise law, but this is a special case.”

“They are all special cases.”

She did not answer him but turned back to the charts. “My oh my,” she said half to herself, “what a chart! What a
beautiful
chart, chief.”

“This we covenant in the Name of Life Immortal”

“T
O THIS we pledge our lives and sacred honor:

“To destroy no fertile life,

“To hold as solemn secret that which may be divulged to us, directly, or indirectly through the techniques of our art, concerning the private matters of our clients,

“To practice our art only with the full and uninfluenced consent of our client zygotes,

“To hold ourselves, moreover, guardian in full trust for the future welfare of infant zygotes and to do only that which we soberly and earnestly believe to be in their best interests,

“To respect meticulously the laws and customs of the group social in which we practice,

“This we covenant in the Name of Life Immortal.”

Extract from the Mendelian Oath
Circa 2075 A.D. (Old Style)

Sweet peas, the evening primrose, the ugly little fruit fly
Drosophila
—back in the XIXth and XXth centuries the Monk Gregor Mendel and Doctor Morgan of the ancient University of Columbia used these humble tools to establish the basic laws of genetics. Simple laws, but subtle.