Larry Niven - Achilles choice

“You could take most of the aliens in science fiction and match their lifestyles to somebody. I remember a critic who thought Bram Stoker’s Dracula was about syphilis. Or take Ursula Le Guin’s—”

“I haven’t—”

“You did, too. Third year of high school, English Lit. You wrote a paper, ‘Vampirism as a Venereal Metaphor.’ It was quite explicit, and led to what you described to your diary as an ‘affair of incandescent intensity, sufficient to set the moon ablaze’ with your Lit tutor.” He grinned happily, an innocent voyeur. “You read Le Guin, too.”

Her face was burning. “How dare you! Do you think peeping into the emotions of real human beings makes you more alive? You’re a ghoul, Saturn. You don’t even have the courage to lie down and die.” She felt violated. Saturn had pried into Beverly! He must know everything, every hope and prayer, every childhood memory. How could he?

“Are we done? Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin’s aliens are a branch of the human race, but they’re neuter most of the time, and when they develop a gender you can’t guess which one She remembered then, and he saw it. “Okay. Good science fiction, but do you think I can’t find people like that in Oakland?

“But the other side is, whenever I wonder about something, it starts a subprogram. I’ve got access to most of human knowledge.

“Twenty-six years ago I wondered if I was human. I had an answer with ninety-one percent confidence in just under two minutes. In ten minutes I had four nines of confidence. Every known human culture had been explored. Le Guin’s aliens were human, Dracula was human, but by any reasonable standard, I’m not.”

“Imagine my surprise,” Jillian said bitterly.

“Rise above it, Jillian. More is at stake here than your feelings.”

“They’re what make me human!”

“Having them, or wallowing in them? I thought you prized discipline. Strength. Achievement. Emotional control makes it possible. Do you see the implications of what I said? Maybe the Council’s not human, either?”

“So you keep replacing them. Your children. Saturn.”

“You got it.”

“How long? Until you get it right?”

“I’m getting closer. The younger Linked are staying human longer. I need to keep them under control, too. You spoke of motives. I don’t trust theirs. Mine you must have guessed— No? All right, Jillian, what would you do if you were me?”

She felt bone-weary. It was all too much, too quick. Her head was reeling, and she yawned mightily. “Sleep for a week.”

“Coffee under the seat. Jillian, I can’t do this twice. The Council can see patterns. I won’t make you a target, Jillian. This conversation ends at Denver.”

Fair enough.

Under the seat was a wrinkled plastic bag. It held a small thermos and a Bullocks sales slip and a package of oat bran cookies with several missing. My God, he’s thorough. The coffee was black and sweet, not too hot. She could feel it pulling her awake.

She said, “Kill them all and then suicide.” She surprised herself that time: there wasn’t any bitterness in that suggestion.

Again Saturn answered instantly. “What about the equipment? Software, computers, never-linked sensing devices, tailored medical procedures like Boost, everything that made us what we are: what about that? If the capability is there, there will be more Linked.”

“That… that’s why the new stuff stopped appearing in the shops!”

“Yes, that was me.”

“Mph. You could destroy… How far back would we have to go to be safe? Nineteen fifty?”

“Destroy the information?” Saturn shrugged. “Making transistors disappear may be beyond me. No, that’s not the way to go. I want a human being who can use everything that was and is available to me, and still remain human. What do I have to do to accomplish that?”

“You’d have to… a training program? You son of a bird. You changed the Olympics.”

“Yes. To help me find people like you, or shape them. Mind and body and spirit. I had to make some compromises, but that won’t last. One day a majority of the Council will be Olympic winners. They won’t put up with the current death rate. Will you?”

Will I. “Not likely. What have you got in mind?”

“Change the rules. Even so, the pattern I’m looking for includes courage. I get that through the Olympics. I’m trying other approaches too. Give computer equipment to primitives after they reach fifty. Gene carving—”

“Only a monster of arrogance would decide what constitutes human.”

“Give me a human and I’ll let him rewrite my specs! I don’t dare. Jillian, the Link techniques are too good. They must be used. The Linked will be the human race. They’re a wall across the future, even if they’re a blind alley. If they go Feral and rip up the Earth, that’s the future too. If they can stay human— I just need one.”

“To be your… child?”

“Partner. Successor. You’re too filled with doubt, Jillian. Power won’t turn you into a monster. It may kill you, tear you apart, but you’re no stranger to inner conflict. I think you’d say that was part of your birthright as a human being, wouldn’t you?”

She was silent.

“Wouldn’t you say it was a natural result of the soul’s attempt to achieve perfection in human form? Wouldn’t you tell me of Christ’s temptation in the desert, his despair on the cross?”

“Shut up,” Jillian said flatly. “Just shut up. Don’t mock me, Saturn. If you don’t believe in the human soul, then you don’t know who I am, no matter how many facts you may have stored away.”

“You have friends who aren’t Christian. You won’t demand that I convert.”

Fair enough. But-“What do you want from me, Saturn?” -

“Not much. I protected you when you were using Holly Lakein to get information. I’ve put you among the Linked. You’ll be one of the powers that rule the human race, on the Earth and off—”

“You’ve made this speech before.”

“To all who’d listen. To the others I’m the old one, the crazy one.”

“You’re not offering much, either, are you?”

“I don’t interfere with the dominance games, no. You’ll be on your own, and I’ll be watching, hoping you can become what I’m hoping to see. If you make it, then welcome to the human race. A small, select group.”

She stared at him. He waited… probably busy elsewhere, a hundred elsewheres, leaving a tendril of attention for the hologram in the subway car.

She sipped coffee, and thought.

She no longer feared death… she had finally accepted that she need not. What she feared now was that she would become Saturn.

Presently she said, “Here it is, Saturn, like it or not. You could have gone to six decimal points, or twenty, and it wouldn’t make any difference. What it is to be human can’t be determined by what we were. Human evolution is too sensitive to initial conditions. My religion says that we bring something into this life which is beyond flesh, or mind, or emotion. I can’t prove it, you can’t disprove it. I choose to believe it. I think that you’re so totally human you scare yourself. You look at me and say, ‘Ah, she has the humanity I gave up,’ and it’s a crock. Your brain is alive. Your heart is asleep. Wake up, damn you. You may be the only chance we have.”

She held her breath for a long beat. Saturn was motionless. Five seconds, perhaps. How many worlds of possibility did he spin through in that moment? Was he reviewing the entirety of his life? Or a thousand futures, projecting fractal probabilities to the nth power?

Then he sighed, and smiled timidly. Saturn held out an ethereal hand to her.

“God help me.”