The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 416
There was another long silence, broken again by Patricia, who said, "We both know that there would be risks."
"Yes," said Devlin, wishing that he could be as confident as she sounded. "But you had us worried for a while—we thought we'd fallen among religious fanatics. I realize that this project has all sorts of philosophical implications, but it has nothing to do with religion, surely, or the afterlife."
"No?"
"Well, no," replied Devlin. "Of course, I may not have thought deeply enough about it."
"You haven't," said the Brother, "and I'll admit that in the objective sense I may not have undergone a religious experience. That reaction depends on your own point of view, or on how your parents brought you up to regard such things; I found that my after-brain recorder had been switched on and its return to Earth's gravity and temperature did not seem to be switching it off; I kept assimilating impressions from everyone around me. This was material which, if I could spare the time to dream about it, gave me their whole life experience up to that point—providing they were men, of course. So I became very understanding even though my basic feelings and beliefs did not change very much.
"Mostly I kept remembering the lives of people who died long ago. They were a pretty varied bunch, with good qualities and bad qualities in combinations which made their lives very recallable. They are all here, complete in every thought and feeling."
He tapped the side of his head, then added seriously, "Everybody suffers, but nobody dies."
"But surely," protested Devlin, "they are only the memories of people, not the people themselves."
The Brother shook his head. He said, "Think of it in this way. When you go to sleep at night your life is switched off, you die. I'm discounting, for the purposes of this argument, the dreaming which some people do and remember and which doesn't really count. When you awaken in the morning you may clearly remember your life of yesterday, but it is only a memory. You will better understand what I'm talking about when you have experienced your first few cold-sleep memories. My point is that everyone who was ever alive is still living in the minds of you colonists, and as for the religious implications ..."
He paused for a moment as the door opened and the incredibly old psychologist rolled in; then he went on, "I have a purely personal view regarding the meaning of my racial memories, you understand, and one which Dr. Martin does not agree with. The vast majority of these lives are recallable because, even in the most simple and mundane lifetimes, there is so much in them that is interesting and valuable and demanding to be recalled. But there are other lives which are so twisted, so violent and unpleasant in one respect or another, that nobody would want to recall them even in part. So there is this mass of material which will rarely, if ever, be recalled. It belongs to people condemned—by their own acts, you will say, and not by any higher authority—to the outer darkness of the forgotten, to Limbo. So far as I am concerned the religious implications are clear."
Dr. Martin rolled his chair behind the desk, and the Brother stood up and solemnly shook hands with Patricia and Devlin. He smiled and said, "The Doctor here describes me as a lapsed atheist, whatever that means. However, now I have to tell you that, following this conditioning session, you will be cooled and stored awaiting transfer to the ship. We will not meet again, and I want to wish both of you good luck and a safe landing."
As he turned to leave, Devlin said. "Wait, Brother. I'm still too confused and frightened by all this to say thank you and really mean it. But I still think it unfair that you people, who have done all the real work, have no chance of getting away. Surely we could make room, or do something to ..."
Brother Howard held up his hand.
"With the problems you are shortly going to face, Doctor," he said drily, "trust you to worry about us. But there is one thing, just one, that you can do.
"Remember us in your dreams."
Chapter Twenty-One
THERE WERE no colonist or crew awakenings while the ship killed its tremendous cruising velocity and began to return to Target Nine, so there was plenty of time to remember and dream. The dreams were as vivid and complete as before, but now Devlin was aware of what was happening and was able to integrate his dreams with his own memories, and he no longer felt helplessly imprisoned by them, as in a nightmare.
He became more and more unselective regarding the material available to him. He learned that pain as well as pleasure was a part of every life that was great or worthwhile, and he recalled people who were truly great to everyone but themselves, and others whose greatness was known only to a few close friends, or perhaps to only one other person. He also learned that there were very few lives that were uninteresting or unworthy of recalling, and even fewer that were completely valueless.
To understand all was to forgive almost all, and Devlin's understanding—or his education, as the Brother had described it at a time when he did not know what was involved—was complete.
He recalled the people he had met in his own lifetime: colleagues at Sanator Five, young Tommy Bennett and his father, Patricia's father, Dr. Martin and Brother Howard. He had met them briefly or for extended periods of time, but everything they had thought and felt up until that point in their lifetimes had made an impression on his after-brain and was available for replay. Each of them lived again in his memory, their lives so sharp and vivid and utterly complete that they lived, period.
He could understand the Brother's point of view about an afterlife, as well as many other things.
Devlin was Brother Howard as an infant, a toddler, a young man rebelling against the constraints of highly moral parents who in their turn were overreacting against the increasing permissiveness of their society, as a test pilot and an astronaut under training, as he had walked the awful emptiness of Mars, as a helpless cold-sleeper reliving, in savage and confusing detail, some of the lives that made up their race's memory.
He was Brother Howard when they had first met in the house of Bennett, a project worker, and when he had met Patricia and Devlin for the first time and decided that they would qualify. He had decided that all of the others would qualify, because he alone on Earth had the ability to know a man completely. He had been responsible for the selection of all the male project personnel and colonists while Dr. Martin, using more mundane methods, had been responsible for screening the women.
As Brother Howard, Devlin was aware of seeing himself as another had seen him, and of the peculiar mental double-image that was his own recollection of his past life superimposed on the one detected by the Brother.
But the subjects for recall included contacts on the project, men who knew the workings of the ship inside-out and from preliminary design sketch to finished and tested hardware. Devlin knew he was only a seed in a fantastically sophisticated metal pod, and that the pod was beginning to deteriorate seriously. He thought that it should be possible for the seeds to help sustain their own ageing and withering pod ...
He was still investigating that possibility when he was awakened.
GOOD MORNING DEVLIN. SHIP STATUS ONE THOUSAND AND THREE YEARS INTO MISSION. SYSTEMS AND/OR BACK-UP SYSTEMS FUNCTIONING AT LEVELS ADEQUATE FOR INSERTION INTO PRE-LANDING ORBIT. SHIP PERSONNEL CURRENTLY AWAKE—TWO. IDENTITIES PATRICIA MORLEY AND JOHN DEVLIN.
No further messages were on the display, Devlin noted as he began exercising. Patricia had said that she would erase the useless reminders about exercising and remembering as a means of saving ship's power. But the single message had told him enough, and his impatience made him complete the exercises while on the way to the control center. Patricia, who must have been fractionally less impatient, arrived there a few seconds later.
With fast, expert movements, they called for the situation report and read that the ship was closing on the target plane and estimating just under five days to pre-landing orbit insertion. All four of the mission termination probes, the most highly sensitive and complex that the ship had available, had already been launched. One had taken up a surveillance orbit and was transmitting data on all channels, another had developed a control malfunction while attempting a soft landing which wasn't, and the other two had been too sick to leave the launching tubes.
The ship itself was not sick, just very, very tired. Even so it declared itself capable of landing them safely on their new home.
"Not an ideal home," said Patricia, following his train of thought, "even if we don't fall into a clump of thorns." She gestured toward the surveillance probe's display and asked, "Shall I look for a few less thorny spots?"
Devlin shook his head. "Not yet, if you don't mind. Will you help me with the ship's personnel status board?" There were twenty-three cold-sleepers in malfunctioning cubicles which, while capable of preserving them, were no longer able to complete resuscitation procedure. "I've been thinking about that problem, and dreaming some of the people who might have been able to solve it."
"Me, too," said Patricia. "Some of the engineers were brilliant women, but they would have needed a lot of skilled help, special equipment and a lot longer than five days to put it right ..."
She broke off as the display announced that seventy-eight of the two hundred-odd remaining sleepers were likely to stay in that condition permanently.
Devlin stared at the figures disbelievingly, his mind reacting to the disaster they represented. Pleadingly, he said, "Is there no chance of repairing the faulty resuscitation equipment? No chance at all?"
"We know what to do," said Patricia gently, "and perhaps if we resuscitated enough of the other sleepers, they might have dreamed enough about the project personnel to recall what must be done. But they were not aware of the problem, remember, and would only dream about the project by sheer luck. As well, we do not have the time or the special equipment needed for the job. You know that, don't you?"
"I know it," said Devlin. "It was just that I was hoping you would come up with an idea ..."
He broke off, thinking about the people who would die as soon as the ship landed and the slow, uncontrolled warmth of the planetary atmosphere began seeping into the space-cold metal of the ship's interior. At present they were in cold-sleep, not technically alive but still dreaming lifetimes and experiences not their own, so neither were they dead. Was it right that he should condemn them to death, and lose so much of his race's memory and experience, by landing on this world? Would it not be better to use the last of the ship's propulsive power to shoot it out again into interstellar space, where the cold would ultimately allow everyone to dream forever about all the people who individually had made up the race of Man?
Would it not be better to be a seed which was complete and perfect and which never fell to ground, than one which was weakened, incomplete and probably destined to die before germination?
"No," said Patricia firmly. "Before you could make that decision you would have to resuscitate everyone and ask for a vote. You would have to do that."
Devlin had not been aware that he had been thinking aloud. He said angrily, "We won't be able to count seventy-eight of the votes, remember. What would you have me do about that?"
"I don't know," she replied furiously, "any better than you do. But you could put two of them in the cubicles belonging to Caldwell and Purdy. Those cubicles were switched off to conserve power, remember. They weren't malfunctions ..."
She broke off to stare at him while he stared just as wildly at her.
They had the answer.
Cautiously, Devlin said, "Do you think we can manage it in just five days? There are seventy-eight of them, after all."
"But we'll have help," Patricia replied excitedly. "If necessary we can warm as many of the others as we need to help with the transfers. We will be very congested towards the end, and the voyage-only consumables will probably run out, but it should work."
"Yes," said Devlin.
He watched her excitement fade as she, too, realized that they had solved just one, the least important one, of their two problems. With the exception of Yvonne Caldwell and Thomas Purdy, their metal pod would arrive with its full complement of seedlings. But they had still to decide on a landing site, on which particular area was least densely overgrown with thorns.
The picture from the surveillance probe, which was capable of virtually unlimited magnification, filled the main display screen.
"Let's deal with one problem at a time," he said. Then seeing her disapproving expression, he added apologetically, "Despite my extensive education and everything, I haven't changed very much—I still try to put off things."
"Yes," she said, and smiled. "And I still seem to be a nag."
For the next two days they were kept very busy resuscitating cold-sleepers, explaining the situation to them and helping them move the people in malfunctioning caskets into those that were still working and lately vacated by other colonists. The solution had been simple and perhaps obvious.
By warming up the occupants of functioning caskets, then initiating a cooldown with the casket empty, the people who had been cooled with no hope of resuscitation could then be moved to functioning caskets and warmed in the ordinary way. Care had to be taken to make sure that a partial, and lethal, warm-up did not take place during the transfer, and even more care was needed to avoid injury to their ultra-frigid and brittle bodies. But once the steadily increasing number of helpers understood what was required, Patricia and Devlin had little to do except stay in the control center and prepare for the landing.
"The latest estimate is that everyone will be warm at re-entry minus six hours," said Patricia. "The drain on consumables will be considerable, so we can all expect to be very hungry—but not enough to weaken us physically. All ship's personnel, except Devlin and me, will take landing deceleration in their caskets, and their displays will keep them informed of what is going on here. People in malfunctioning cubicles will be in the dark, in both senses of the word, and very cold. They will have to borrow a couple of sets of coveralls each if the cubicle heaters are also out. The post-landing food supply and food synthesizers, seeds, livestock breeders, agricultural and construction machinery have been checked. The automatic unlocking systems are functioning and will open these supplies to us as soon as we touch down.
"I wonder," she ended worriedly, "if we will be given the chance to eat a hearty meal before—"
"Several, I should think," said Devlin reassuringly. "Especially if we land in the middle of nowhere."
Patricia smiled and said, "Let's try to find nowhere."
The post-landing food supply and equipment, designed to enable them to survive for at least two months while they established a base and set up the tissue and plant synthesizers, that would further extend their reserves until the first crops came in, had been locked away during the voyage for obvious reasons. He wondered, remembering his first experience with the pallid, pear-shaped, spindly and highly aggressive aliens, whether a self-guiding nuclear weed-killer would put an abrupt stop to their first celebration dinner on the new world.
They were here first, he thought despairingly, and we would not trespass if we had any other choice. But could the aliens believe that? Was there any chance of communicating with them and of making them understand?
There was not enough time to do it from orbit, and by the time they were down the natives would already have made their decision. There was nothing to do but set down in one of the least densely populated areas and hope that they would not be noticed until they were able to work out some method of communication or, he thought bitterly, until a few of the sheep grew fangs.
He was remembering Hawn and the young king and the millions of others who had learned how to survive amid violence and whose knowledge was instantly available should the colonists need it. But were they capable of using such knowledge? And if they did use it, would they ever again be able to think of themselves as sheep?
Would the meek, he wondered bitterly, ever inherit anything?
In silence they called up the recordings of their original fly-by, comparing them with current views of the same planetary area. Obviously the world had an awful lot of usable empty space; there had been no major building or expansion programs and the colony had suffered something less than a population explosion. Radiation sensor data comparisons still showed minor emissions, chiefly on the communication frequencies, from the widely scattered housing and unmistakable evidence of nuclear technology in the towns, which were obviously the manufacturing centers for the colony world.
"It isn't exactly an expanding colony," said Devlin, rubbing his eyes. They had been staring at displays for nearly three hours. He added, "I wonder if the planet is only marginally suited to their form of life, as it is to ours. Maybe there are trace elements in the atmosphere which are toxic to them, or the heavier gravity makes it difficult to have children ..."
"Then we must look for parks and schools," she broke in quickly. "Anywhere likely to contain children. Even with a totally strange life form you should be able to tell if the children are healthy."
"Yes, indeed," said Devlin, and tapped for maximum magnification from the probe's visual sensors. Together they concentrated on holding the images steady, swearing when heat eddies distorted the pictures or the guidance went slightly off to leave them staring at an uninteresting expanse of roofing. They saw many natives, foreshortened except when they were lying down, of all sizes. They were unable to find any structures remotely resembling a school—at least, they could not recognize it as such if they did see one. There were children in the parks, in the streets with parents, playing on the beaches. All of them appeared to be healthy and very active.
