Nature's Shift (15 page)

Rowland talked a great deal, offering information as to what the equipment he showed me had been used to do, and what tasks it was still performing, but there was little explanation in what he said. He seemed determined to let his precious secrets out slowly—more, I suspect, because he was so used to clinging on to them than because he really feared that I would be slow to grasp their intellectual essence.

I memorized the route down to the first subterranean level, though, and took note of doors that might yield access to lower ones.

In return for all the information that Rowland vouchsafed, I marveled audibly that any one man could possibly make use of such extensive laboratory facilities, and complimented him repeatedly on the achievements he had made. He assured me that the high level of automation made it reasonably easy to operate his machinery and maintain his cultures. He had relatively few household robots, regarding the motile varieties as inherently unreliable examples of the mechanician's art, but admitted that some routine activities were contracted out to service personnel who operated machines by remote control.

“I suppose that I should train Adam and Eve to offer more assistance on the scientific side,” he said, “but I prefer them in their present roles. That's selfish of me, I know…but I think they prefer it too. If either of them were specifically to request…but the simple fact is that things are as they are.”

He showed me other holding tanks in which he kept his various species of burrowing “worms”, which interested me more than anything else I had seen, because of the previous evening's conversation. Most of the species needed special containers, made of some substance that they could not break up or digest, so there was more metal and plastic here than in other specimen-holding rooms. There were observation-windows that let us look in upon the creatures in opaque containers, although we could see little enough within because of the difficulties of providing lighting systems immune from the ravages of the larvae.

Rowland told me that he allowed a few species of these “worms” to live freely in the structure of the house, as parasites, because they were too limited in their habits to damage its structure, and performed useful waste-disposal functions as they foraged for food.

“You'll run across one of them sooner or later, in one of the corridors,” Rowland told me. “It might give you a shock at first, but you'll soon got used to it. Please don't tread on them, deliberately or accidentally.”

“How do you direct the burrowing of the more voracious species?” I asked him. “Surely, any kind of escape would be desperately dangerous—some of the worms must be able to devour the fabric of the house.”

“Elementary cyborgization,” he told me. “The creatures have little or no brain, and are guided through life by simple behavioral drives. It's a relatively easy matter to fit their nervous systems with electronic devices that deliver the appropriate commands by electrical or biochemical stimulation. I handle them with great care, mind. They can't live on the materials they're designed to tunnel through, and their diets are deliberately exotic. I feed them what they need in order to execute a particular task, and no more. They can't escape, and couldn't live in the wild, so to speak, if they did.”

Watching those curious creatures, whether roaming loose or imprisoned in their tanks, made me slightly nauseous, although I had often seen their smaller kin before. Most were like monstrous blowfly maggots—big and soft and white, their body walls so transparent that one could see the organs inside them. Some of them were a meter and a half in length and at least eighty centimeters in girth. Their internal organs were not conspicuouly colored, but they were wrapped in complex webs of blue and pink. Rowland told me that he had equipped their bodies with defined circulatory systems, in which hemoglobin-laden ichor circulated, in order to serve the oxygen-needs of their organs; like us the creatures had deoxygenated blue ichor in their veins and oxygenated red ichor in their arteries.

Some of Rowland's “worms” looked more like elongated centipedes than maggots, being bright yellow in color and equipped with hundreds of pairs of limbs along the length of their plated bodies. These too were the largest of their kind I had ever encountered, being at least four meters long, although only as thick as a man's wrist. A few of the living machines were, on the other hand, surprisingly small: there were black, hard-skinned creatures that were only a few centimeters from head to tail, though they had vast heads that were almost all jaws. Rowland informed me that these were very difficult to rear because of the enormous amounts of food they had to consume in order to work the massive mandibles. In their holding tank, they were virtually submerged in high-protein fluid.

“Perpetual life in the womb,” I observed. “Born for rare brief intervals, and the returned. Every embryo's dream.”

“Do you think so?” he said, as if I'd meant it seriously.

“Of what else can an embryo dream but an eternal, or near-eternal womb?” I suggested, flippantly. “How could it imagine the potential rewards of life after birth, even after having fallen into that hell repeatedly, to perform allotted tasks?”

“But it's not an embryo,” he objected. “It's a larva.”

“The principle,” I insisted, frivolously, “is the same. It's the way of life that's important, not the exact biological status of the liver.”

He nodded. “Sorry,” he said. “Slow on the uptake—I see what you mean.”

But I wasn't sure that he did, given the way he was living himself.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The marvels of the tour had a cumulative effect, as we moved from room to room, and my initial frustration evaporated. Rowland showed me clusters of “roots” that the house extended into the substrate of the swamp, and the apparatus for gathering in organic materials from the silt. He showed me further examples of the biological batteries that produced electricity for his research laboratories—which had a potential output, Rowland boasted, equivalent to thirty billion electric eels. All I saw of such systems, however, were their superficial termini; most of their mass inevitably remained hidden; what could be seen of the house's systems was far less, in metaphorical terms, than the tip of an iceberg.

Rowland assured me that there was still more to be seen, and than the full tour would require at least one more day. He reeled off statistics in an impressively casual manner, telling me that the biomass of the house was greater than ten thousand elephants, and that if it had been a single organism then it would have been the vastest that had ever existed on Earth.

As the time afternoon wore on, however, it was evident that Rowland was once again becoming increasingly tired. His graphic descriptions began to diversify into flights of fantasy, in which he repeated himself without apparently being aware that he was doing so—but they did extend further than the beginnings laid down the previous day.

I listened to his prophetic ramblings, to the effect that houses descendant from this one would gradually replace the plants and animals making up the world's ecosystems in the course of the third millennium, so that in a thousand years' time the entire ecosphere might well consist of nothing but organic artifacts: not merely houses but entire cities, all of which would be locked into a careful mutually symbiotic relationship, controlled by humans or their successors.

“Successors? I said. “Post-humans, you mean?”

“If you like,” he replied—but the remark was a mere punctuation-mark in his flight of fancy, and he obviously disapproved of my interruption. In a world such as the one he was anticipating, Rowland hypothesized, sexual reproduction might become the sole prerogative of humankind, if humans survived at all, everything else in the organic realm being capable only of vegetative growth or of being cloned and transformed by genetic engineers—but only if the masters of the ecosphere wanted it that way.

I got the strong impression that he wouldn't, if he were the master of the ecosphere: that houses descended from his would be sexual mothers in every sense of the world—more so, although he was careful not to spell it out in those precise terms, than Rosalind, who had to make elaborate use of
in vitro
fertilization and ectogenesis in producing her children.

I confess that I did not find his vision of a world full of living houses a wholly attractive prophecy (or speculation, for Rowland was talking of opportunity rather than destiny) but there was, as ever, something very attractive in the sheer grandiosity of Rowland's ecstatic voyages of the imagination. The magic of his ideas took a firm grip on me, encouraging my own mind to the contemplation of vistas of future history extending toward infinite horizons. I joined in with his game for a while, and briefly became so carried away that I didn't notice immediately that Rowland was so very tired that he was having difficulty supporting himself.

I couldn't believe that showing me around his petty empire was any more physically exhausting than the work he routinely did in his laboratories, but Rowland definitely seemed more distressed than he had at any time during the previous two days. After the previous day's argument, I didn't want to labor the point, but I felt that I had to forbid any further wandering when we were still more than an hour short of diner time. Diplomatically, I told him that I was tired and needed rest, and he seemed grateful that I had taken the trouble to spare his feelings.

Once dinner was served, however, the food seemed to revive Rowland's body and mind alike, and he ate heartily. Afterwards, he seemed sufficiently restored to commit himself to conversation again, in the comfort of the study, with another bottle of wine.

He set out, initially, to tell me more about the history of his researches, but we soon moved on yet again—quite naturally, it seemed—to more intimate personal matters. I didn't have to make any effort to steer him toward the subject of Magdalen, which seemed to be exactly where he wanted to go.

“She should have come back here,” he said, flatly. “I deserved that. Whether we could have worked things out or not, she should have given me the chance. She owed me that much. She should at least have kept in touch with the work, and continued talking to me about serious matters, instead of mere trivia.”

“Perhaps she didn't consider the things she wanted to talk about mere trivia,” I suggested, softly. “She was worried about you, as I am…and Rosalind too. If you were as dismissive of her anxieties as you are of mine, that probably made her worry even more.

Tellingly, his reply was: “She had no cause to worry about me. Evidently, I was the one who had cause to be worried…but I didn't know that. She knew how busy I was, but if she'd given me any hint that she was in trouble…more trouble….”

“Perhaps she knew what you'd say,” I offered, hesitantly. “Perhaps she knew that you'd only urge her with all your might to come back here—and didn't want to do that.”

“But it's what she should have done,” Rowland persisted, “whether she wanted to or not. Given time, I could have explained. Given time, I could have brought her back into the work, shown her what we needed to do, taught her how we needed to go about it. She was brilliant, you know, in her way. She never thought so, but she was. She was Rosalind's daughter—and my sister. I tried so hard to get her past the obstacles that were in her way. If she'd only stayed, or come back….”

“Perhaps she needed you to go to her,” I suggested. “Perhaps, if you'd been willing….”

“That's Rosalind talking,” he said, flatly—and quite unfairly, I thought.

“Just because she's your mother,” I said, in a voice that was hardly above a whisper, “it doesn't mean she's always wrong.”

He contrived to laugh at that, although I wasn't at all sure that I'd intended it as a joke.

“Don't take her side,” he said. “You're my friend. You're supposed to side with me, even if you can't quite understand yet what this is all about.”

“I loved Magdalen too,” I said.

“I know—but she wasn't your sister.”

“She was your half-sister,” I said, “and even Rosalind says, now, that she could have coped, and would have supported you, if….”

“Don't be absurd,” he retorted. “She's lost a daughter, and is entitled to a little foolishness after the fact—but you know full well what kind of effect it would have had on the family, the Hive, everything, if we'd ever be able to reconcile ourselves to it…which we couldn't.”

“In which case,” I said, quietly, “what would have been the point of her coming back here?”

He shook his head, but didn't bother to tell me out loud that I didn't understand. “Do you think Rosalind has ever had sex?” he asked me, abruptly.

I was shocked as well as startled. “How should I know?” I retorted.

“I didn't mean with you,” he said, misunderstanding the alacrity of my reaction. “I meant with anyone.”

“I knew what you meant,” I assured him. I wanted to change the subject, but I didn't dare. Absurd as the question was, he'd asked it with certain intensity. For some unimaginable reason, he thought that it was important. “It's none of my business. I imagine so. Just because she didn't go that route to have her children doesn't mean that she doesn't do it….and certainly not that she's never done it.”

“I don't think she ever has,” Rowland opined, brutally. “I don't think anyone could ever be good enough for her, except the one man with whom it was out of the question.”

This time I was astounded. “Roderick?” I said, incredulously.

“Exactly,” he replied.

“Are you sure you're nor projecting your own feelings on to her, wanting to co-opt her into a similar confusion?” I asked, rather rudely—but we already seemed to have left the limits of diplomacy far behind.

He laughed, though, and said: “Maybe. Sorry—this is making you uncomfortable isn't it? Although you'll need to understand everything, in the end. In my youth, you know, while Rosalind and I were still on speaking terms, she told me about one of her grand plans—trying it out for size, as it were. You're only familiar with the grand plans she's actually put into operation, of course, but there were many others that fell by the wayside. The one thing I'll always be thankful to her for is my imagination. Anyway, the grand plan was that she wanted to free humankind from the burden of sexual attraction, and direct our capacity for love into more appropriate channels—and she meant it, quite seriously.”

The one thing I couldn't possibly say was that it didn't sound like such a lousy idea to me, so I tried to formulate a sardonic laugh instead. “Can I have three guesses as to what the more appropriate channels might be?” I asked, flippantly.

“You'd only need one,” he told me.

“Flowers?” I suggested, knowing that I'd almost certainly hit the nail on the head.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Can you imagine it: on-line catalogues of floral sex-aids? Sweetly-perfumed, of course, and as lovely to touch as to look at?”

I could imagine it easily enough—what I couldn't imagine, though, was that such outlets would every command the loyalty of a significant minority of humankind, let alone the entire race. “Actually,” I told him, “I'm not sure that she's given up on that particular dream. She might have accepted that marketing flowers designed as masturbation-aids was a non-starter, but her research in olfactory psychotropics might have been inspired by the dream of cutting out the middleman—or middlething—entirely.”

“Olfactory orgasms,” Rowland mused. “Yes, that sounds like Rosalind's sort of dream. I doubt that it's possible, though.”

“You shouldn't underestimate possibility, Rowland,” I said. “Just because she's your mother….”

“You've already done that joke once,” he said, interrupting sharply. Obviously, he wasn't prepared to laugh at it a second time.

The moment was becoming awkward, and I cast around for a way to break the spell.

“I had a dream last night,” I said, hesitantly. “At least, I think it was a dream. I thought I saw Magdalen's ghost.”

“Where?” he asked, in a determinedly neutral tone—so determinedly neutral that I couldn't tell what emotion he was trying to keep out of it.

“Here. I chased her round and round the spiral corridor, but I couldn't catch her. In the end, I lost her.”

He paused for three exceedingly long seconds before saying: “I sometimes dream about her myself. More than sometimes. Often. More often still since I got the news.”

“Understandable,” I opined.

“Understandable,” he agreed. “You too—understandable, that is. Even Rosalind….”

“Please,” I said, “no more discussion of Rosalind's sex life, or lack of one.”

“Right,” he said. “Insensitive. Sorry. How on earth did we get on to it in the first place? My fault, wasn't it? You must forgive me. Spending so much time on my own, I've got into the habit of talking to myself—my internal censor's dropped its guard. I'll have to remember, now that I have company more intimate than Adam and Eve, that I need to think before I speak—or at least before I change the subject. We should be taking about sensible matters: gantzing, genetic transformation, the management of control genes,
house-building
. We were talking about those sorts of things, weren't we, before we went astray?”

“It's okay,” I said. “We're friends. We can go astray occasionally. It doesn't matter.” I didn't want to suggest that it might not have been a lapse in his internal censorship that had led us astray—that it might, instead, have been the effects of his self-induced tumor—because I didn't want to make him angry, and because I didn't want to say that even to myself, privately.

“You're right,” he said. “It's harder to slip back into the old relationship than I thought it would be, isn't it? Sometimes, everything seems so easy, so natural, but then….we suddenly realize how long it's been, and that time hasn't stood still in the interim. We have time, though, don't we?—time to rediscover what it was that made us such good friends, back then.”

“Yes,” I said. “We have all the time in the world.”

I thought it was true.