Damon Knight - Orbit 19

“My free will,” Cy said.

“Yes. Let me tell you another story. I was assigned to an industrial magnate some years ago. He had lost everything in the redistribution. He was ferociously intent on outwitting me, on playing executive chess, on gamesmanship, one-upmanship. I could not extinguish this in him, it was like a tropism, it was in him to the marrow of his bones. He was hopeless, so I kept his proline compacted and his myelin sheaths fatty. He was happy, but totally controlled. You, Cy, are cut of much better DNA chains, and because of this, you can come very close to having your cake and eating it too.”

Cy, who had been listening patiently, spun away to the clothing locker. He pulled on a yellow jumpsuit, and reached for a helmet. “Think I’ll take the cycle this morning,” he said over his shoulder to the console. “I feel like having some wind in my face.”

“Take the impact neutralizer with you if you go visual.”

“If I got through the gates without it, you’d beam me back, wouldn’t you?”

“Only if your route manifest wasn’t coded in.”

Cy flipped the helmet over his shoulder, holding it casually by the strap. He put his forearm on the decklid of the console and leaned in slightly, as if listening for an intercom message.

“Suppose I ran for it, tried to ram through the veil, or tried to kill myself. You could allow, or disallow either?”

“Certainly, provided you were within my range.”

“What would be your motive? How could you make such decisions?”

“I’ve told you before, Cy, if your MTV index equals point oh five critical mass, it means your organismic parameters are fading, and my choice factor goes up to point ten confidence level.”

“The farther away I get from you, the less control you have over me?”

“Correct.”

“1 could stand on the other side of town, and tell you to go to hell, right?”

“The provost robots would have control there, or most anywhere in town.”

“This can also be a way of phasing me out, kicking me upstairs, putting me out to pasture?”

“Those are overly emotional terms, Cy. I cannot alter the decay factor in your organismic essence. I can compensate for it by programming compatible inputs for you, by giving you appropriate response alternates, by feeding you good homeostatic signals.”

“Is that why I can’t have my Marilyn Monroe dolly-bot anymore?”

“Yes. The three-day marathon you had with her last April wracked you thoroughly. At the risk of being corny, you are not as young as you used to be.”

“But the basis of your withholding this pleasure from me has to be objective.”

“Right. Your MTV index got to three point nineteen standard deviations, and that is very far out into the tail of the curve, so to say.”

“How far, O Great Parametric Stat Expert?”

“Three point twenty-five is well into actuarially checkered territory. You’re happy with Mara, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but she is programmed, programmed, programmed. Even when she seems to be innovative, the spontaneity is lacking. Who am I paired with next?”

“A Japanese pubescent.”

“How does that constitute experience compatible with my organismic parameters?”

“You are basically kind, Cyrus, whether you like to show it or not. The Oriental Synod wants a sample of adolescents and pubescents paired with men like you. You might call it a cultural exchange program. The Synod feels you can be effective in initiating this child into heterosex.”

Cy feinted a punch at the console. “I could call you a dirty old machine. Well, I’m off—”

He took the airshaft to the transportation deck, where a security robot read his cranial wattage I.D., and punched in the codes for the cycle he requisitioned. The mustard-yellow Kawasaki rose through a hatch and onto the ramp. The bike was fitted with a globular impact neutralizer. Cy pulled on his helmet, swung onto the cycle, and eased down the ramp to street level. His route manifest read Pentagon Mews, the location of the Sociologic Nostalgia classes, where he was taking input saturates in the history of barter. He clamped the handlebar throttle till the tach swept up to ten, and the cycle droned along the parkway reprod. The traffic was mostly cycles, with the usual smattering of bubbletop Messerschmidts, tiny Subarus, and unicycles. The sky shone teal blue overhead, fading to lighter shades down the bowl of the artificial sky to the shimmering white force-field that marked the municipal boundary. The low airspace was beginning to fill with flitters and hovercraft. Cy blasted through the Agnew Tunnel and onto the Roosevelt Parkway, brushing the force-field of an ancient Daimler saloon as the cycle swept past the Onassis III monument. He drove slowly into the Pentagon Mews mall and parked the bike.

To his left, the huge Pentagon building was weathered and flecked with lichens and moss. The sections that had been firebombed lay unrepaired, grown up in wild honeysuckle and rare truffle spores. The government insisted it had no funds to rebuild nonessential edifices damaged in civil insurrections. Giant tapeworms glutted themselves briefly in the commissaries, then died. Esoteric viruses found no symbionts among the local humanoids, and developed atavistic behaviors, sometimes attacking each other like sharks in a blood bath. Cats and dogs prowled the tubeways and ducts, and rumor had it that the reflecting pools teemed with piranhas and mutated hydras. The habitable portions of the building were used as museums and classrooms for the dwindling population. Cy found his classroom, and sat beside a gaseous energoid from a distant galaxy.

“Be so gracious as to connect ID conduits,” a warmly neutral voice spoke through the ceiling transducer. Cy looked down to the podium and saw three small consoles and a holobot cabinet. He clipped the id conduit into his headset. Another voice, equally warm and neutral, spoke to him: “Presence of gaseous organism in the adjacent seat has affected your vascular-respiratory parameters. No danger, but the organism states that it will take no offense if you should choose a more distant seat.” Cy turned to the willowy undulate, bowed slightly to its pulsing nucleus, moved five rows down, and sat between a translucent empath and a leathery sumo gladiator. The empath colored dim red and the gladiator snorted softly. Cy re-clipped his headset and id conduit and settled back for the lecture.

The lights faded to dusky gray and the podium was spotlighted. A holographic robot materialized behind the lectern. The figure looked like Eisenhower and John Glenn combined, and the voice was smooth, strong, assuring, wonderfully confidence-inspiring:

“You diverse organisms are the remaining few in this geographical quadrant. You have survived orthodox, tribal, and ritualistic wars, civil insurrections, geological quakes, viral monsoons, and cosmic ray showers. A few of you trace your seniority far back to the hydrogen and cobalt bomb wars. Whether your survival is capricious or controlled is of no real consequence. It suffices that you inhabit this portion of the earth, and have the responsibility, or the option, or the multiple choice of procreating, fostering civility, ritualizing, or dying. In the interest of focusing your feelings toward these alternatives, this current saturate course is being required of you—”

Far down on the front row, a chondric-skinned homunculus fell asleep and slid onto the floor, like soft taffy. “Where is this member’s consolbot?” the Eisenhower-Glenn holobot asked. No one in the audience responded. The holobot motioned to two provost robots, who lifted the homunculus back in his seat. Cyrus laughed softly. Lucky cat, he thought, he is out of the range of his console. The empath winced slightly at Cy’s laughter, its onion-shaped head ducking down. The holobot continued: “You all know that your behaviors are essentially within controlling limits at all times. There is little to be gained through innovative, holopathic, or robopathic planning. You should know that, of you three hundred twenty-four remaining residents of District Washington Quad, seven have attempted to leave the area within the last three years. All died painful and wasteful deaths in unmonitored sectors beyond the force-veil. It is vital that you stay within range of your consolbots, or an ancillary monitor—”