Michael Kube-McDowell - The Quiet Pools

“And the Chi-negatives? Are they the core of Homeworld?”

“Who knows?” Keith said, interrupting his answer for a swig from the bottle. “Homeworlders don’t tend to present themselves at the lab for testing. But if I were going to guess, I’d say that they’re mostly B-positives—they’re the most hidebound, the most sessile.”

“That makes it sound like the different combinations have recognizable personalities.”

“Not officially,” Keith said. “But of course they do. A gene that’s not expressed in structure or behavior wouldn’t be important. I’ve processed more than two thousand applicants. I can call them eight times out of ten. These aren’t just genotypes. They’re human archetypes. It’s affected how I deal with people, actually. When I meet someone for the first time, all I see is their Chi attribute.”

“What is it you see?”

“I told you part of it already,” Keith said. “Think of the A gene as ambition, the B as the breeding instinct, and C as the Call, and you can just about figure them out yourself.”

“A-positives are adventurers,” Christopher said slowly. “B-positives are nestmakers. C-positives—what, hear voices?”

“More or less. I call them the dreamers. Pure faith, pure reason, pure art. Priests, physicists, and philosophers.”

“Do the traits combine?”

“Of course. And there’s more variation in the combinations. BCs are the good citizens—workers and soldiers. The Call expresses itself as duty, allegiance. But put ambition and the Call together and you get a Creator—an artist or an inventor.”

“Loi. She’d be an AC-positive, then?”

“Probably.”

“And Jessie a nestmaker. What else is there?”

“Everyone’s favorite—the AB-positives. Ambition and nest-making builds kings and tycoons.”

“And the pure Chi-positives? ”

Another swallow. “Statesmen, saints, and avatars. And there are precious few of them.”

Christopher counted. “Seven. One more. You didn’t answer before. Who are the Chi-negatives?”

“Can’t you figure it out?” Keith asked, coughing. “Why do you think there are so many meaningless lives? They’re the people whose bodies give them no direction, no purpose. They don’t burn. They don’t want. They just are—instant to instant, day to day, like some cruel joke of nature. The hollow-chested Tin Men. The empty people. The damned.”

The bottle was empty, and the sky overhead winter-black. They walked back in silence toward where the Avanti was parked, Christopher withdrawn, trying to absorb—or was it resist?—what he had heard. Keith’s steps and spirit seemed lighter, the difficult obligation discharged without disaster.

“I don’t know what to think,” Christopher said when they finally reached the car.

“Believe what you want,” Keith said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it? How many Chi-positives are going on Memphis !”

“I have no idea.”

“Ten thousand?”

“Oh, no,” Keith said, shaking his head vigorously. “Even if we could find that many. Chi-positives are difficult. It’s just the way they are. They’re the glue—but did you ever try building something from glue alone? Memphis has no use for kings and adventurers. Ur is in trouble because we sent her off with too many kings aboard—we didn’t understand yet what the rules were. And the nestmakers and dreamers have no use for us.”

“So who are you taking?”

Keith settled back against the fender. “ Memphis needs a core of stable, loyal, dedicated people who know their place in the plan. It needs a leavening of creative types to keep the vision alive and deal with the unexpected. And it needs wise, unselfish leadership.”

“BCs, ACs, and Chi-positives.”

“I told you you’d catch on.”

“But when Memphis gets where it’s going, then you’ll need the others—the kings and adventurers and the rest—to build nests and empires on the new world.”

“Right. So they’re making the trip in steerage, where they won’t be any trouble.”

It took Christopher a moment to understand his meaning. “The gamete banks—that’s what the gamete banks are for.”

Keith made an imaginary mark in the air with his finger. “One point for the contestant from Oregon.”

“So how many Chi-positives? Five thousand? Five hundred? Fifty? How rare are they?”

“I told you, I don’t know,” Keith said. “They’re about four percent of the applicant pool. But that’s a self-selected sample. Why does it matter?”

“Because of what Jeremiah said. What happens when they’re gone, Daniel? Are you stealing the spark?”

A surprised laugh was Keith’s first response. “And John Gait said that he would stop the motor of the world,” he said. “Our poor little ten thousand, Christopher? We won’t even notice they’re gone.”

“You just finished telling me how special they are. The pinnacle of evolution.”

Impatience flashed across Keith’s face. “How about a little perspective? There’ve been at least fifty natural disasters and a hundred wars in the Christian era alone that killed a hundred thousand or more. There was a flood in China in 1931 that wiped out almost four million . The Second World War killed forty million.”

“But who were they, Daniel?” he demanded, stepping closer. “Drones and breeders? The faithful and patriotic? How many of them had a chance to shape the world? How many of them even had a chance to shape their own lives? And even so, do you really think it doesn’t cost us anything when a whole race, a whole generation, is exterminated?”

Keith held his hands palm-out in supplication. “It’s only ten thousand. Not a race. Not a generation. Do you know how long it takes the world population to replace ten thousand people? An hour. Forty-nine minutes, if you want to split hairs.”

“You said it yourself. They’re self-selected. The manifest for Memphis is made up of ten thousand of the best educated, most talented, most highly motivated people we’ve produced. If this is where it’s all been pointing, how can it not make a difference? You can’t have it both ways. The birds are still here, but the rest of the dinosaurs are gone. Sometimes the torch passes.”

“That’s fear-talk,” Keith said, straightening from his casual pose. “I expected better from you.”

“Really? Is that why you brought the gun?” Christopher’s hand closed around the neck of the bottle in a fighting grip. “And please, don’t insult my intelligence. I saw it when you paid for the wine. How close did I come to being dumped into the lake?”

With a slow, deliberate motion, Keith reached into an inner pocket and retrieved the contoured shape of a shockbox, which he laid on the roof of the car. “I wouldn’t come down here at night without something. It had nothing to do with you.”

“I’d like to believe that, Daniel, except I don’t know what you’re up to. I can’t figure out why you told me what you did tonight.”

“I told you the truth. Everything you asked.”

“I know. You told me things I’d have been months finding out.”

Keith shook his head. “You’d never have found them. There isn’t even anything in the hyper.”

“You’re not helping your case. Nobody tells this kind of secret as a favor. We’ve been friends, but not that good of friends. What do you gain? Or are you supposed to kill me now?”

“No.” Keith took a sideways step away from the car and the gun.

“Then tell me what’s going on, goddammit,” Christopher said, looking around nervously. “I’m getting very jumpy out here. Why did you tell me?”