Anderson, Poul - SS Read online

  “This region must have become pretty well depopulated in the time since I went to ‘sleep’,” he remarked.

  “Why, nuw. It are raader heawily settled,” replied Chang. “Dere must be-a, oh, all of a million people witin a radyus of a tousand kilometers.”

  “But— That’s less than— How many people are there in the country?”

  “About tirty million in Nort America. Or on all Eart, abuwt haaf a billion. Of cuwrse, dere must be-a a good ted million on de oder planets of de Solsystem, and perhaps anoder haaf billion in Centaari and elsevvhaar—but little are knuwed abmvt dat.”

  “But—in my time, there were over two billion people on Earth!”

  Chang gave Hart a quizzidkl look. “Su I have heared,” he said slowly. “But times have cha-enged, Tov. It may taak du some while to reelayze huw much dey have cha-enged.’’ They entered the clinic. A blond young woman who was apparently a nurse stood waiting for them. She wore a crisp white skirt, and nothing else, and she was gorgeous.

  She and Chang gave their patient an examination which for thoroughness surpassed anything in his time. He didn’t pretend to understand the machines that buzzed and clicked and glowed around him, the serological tests and the curious symbolic notation. But he hadn’t expected to —naturally, medicine would be far advanced, and he hadn’t troubled himself to learn the details even of the past techniques.

  “Very good,” said the doctor at last. “Satisfactry reactions tuw virus Beta, good Delta cofficient—yes, we skood suwn have du well, Tov Hart.” “What’s the cure?” he asked idly. “In my time they were beginning to think there’d never be a specific for cancer.”

  “Dere aren’t, but dere are specifics for de difrent kinds. Artficial diseases have bee-an developed which attack uwnly de disorganized cancer cells. Frinstance, for cancer of de liver we inject a disease of de liver, but one which healthy tissue can resist. De sick cells are eaten away sluwly enough so dat normal tissue grinvs back to replace dem as dey disappear. It are more complex dan dat, of cuwrse, but dat give du de genral idea-a.” He smiled. “A mont or su in hospital skood suffice for du, and we can give du de oder tests in de mea-anwhile.”

  “The . . . other—?” It sounded faintly ominous.

  “Classficating and su on. Worry du pot abuvvt it no.”

  “Come du,” said the nurse. “I will taak du to ruwm duurs.”

  Hart followed her to an elevator. It went up with a pleasingly low acceleration, but his pulse went a little fast just the same. She was exciting !

  “What’s your name, please?” he asked. He put on the smile which had usually worked in the past. “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other, I hope.”

  The girl frowned, then seemed to make an allowance for him. “Mara Sorens Haalwor.”

  “This is a pleasure . . . you’re not married ?” Hart edged closer.

  “Mayried? Oh, de uwld style. Nuw, but—” She backed away. Her face bore an expression of distaste, barely covered by politeness. “Please du, Tov Hart—”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Hart moved from her, a little chapfallen. Oh, well.

  He had a room to himself—he found out later that all hospital patients did—which delighted him. It was large and sunny, more like a living room than anything else. The furniture was curious, rather hard and low-legged—Asiatic influence during the dark ages?—but he could get used to that. There was a set of buttons on the wall which he learned how to use when he wanted to read. Central “libraries” had all the books and music in existence, no one owned volumes or records privately any more. To read anything in existence, one simply called the nearest “library” and asked for it; automatically, the hooks—actually, record tapes—were flashed onto a screen, the speed being regulated by the reader. Likewise, any music was played directly into the citizen’s own room. There were enough copies of all record tapes to take care of any reasonable number of simultaneous requests, and if a local "library” didn’t happen to have a certain item it would be relayed from one which did.

  Curiously, there were no movie records, and no regular radio or television programs. Hart was too busy catching up with history and language at first to wonder why.

  His synthetic disease and the physiological strain of growing new tissue left him a little weak, he stayed close to his room and only went out in the hospital gardens on orders of the staff. Nor did he have any visitors except the medical workers. After a while, he began to be lonely.

  He was put through a series of psychological tests more exhaustive than the physical checkups. Here, too, he was baffled by the intricacy of a science evolved immensely beyond the older one which itself had puzzled him. Some of it was recognizable—word-association, elaborate questionnaires much of which seemed to be completely irrelevant, long informal talks with a psychiatrist. And the huge machines which studied him seemed remote descendants of the electroencephalographs he had known. But he went through completely bewildering processes—hypnotism, drugging, physical exercises.

  “What’s the idea?” he demanded, a little indignantly. “You seem to want to know me better than I know myself. Why ?”

  “Psychoclassficating,” said the tester. “All citizens undergo it, with periodic rechecks.”

  That sounded ominous. What kind of totalitarian state have I landed in? “What do you do with the results?”

  “Counsel, advise, straighten mvt conflicts. And, of cuwrse, arra-enge introductions.” The psychiatrist looked troubled. He kept looking at the elaborate data sheets in his hand, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he saw. “Suwcial integating of individual depend on what psychotype he are, Tov Hart. No, if du will excoose me, I must study dese results-”

  Hart went back to his reading. He was having trouble finding out what kind of world he lived in. There were plenty of histories, but they said little about the details of daily life, and they grew remarkably uneventful as they neared the present time. There were also plenty of sociological texts, but these were written in a technical language that left his head whirling—much of the material, indeed, was mathematical. He recognized the symbology as descended from the symbolic logic and calculus of statement of his own time, but since his acquaintance with those had been completely superficial that didn’t help much.

  But manners, customs, family relations, all the million little details which make up life—rather than the abstractions of life, such as history and sociology—were nowhere explicitly described. After all, why should a people concern itself with its own mores? Such things are learned in childhood, are absorbed unconsciously as the individual grows through life. Had any twentieth century anthropologist ever described the habits and customs and beliefs of New York as carefully and objectively as he did those of the upper Congo? Hart £ound himself in the curious position of having learned more about the social organization of the natives of Procyon IV than those of Sol III.

  He went back to history. That he could learn objectively, and with such a background feel his way around contemporary Earth until he learned the social ropes.

  But it bewildered him. It had no feel of reality to it, for it was not part of the matrix which had produced him. The Church of the Second Coming, the Asiatic invasion of America, the mechaniolatry of the Australian Reformers, the invasion of Luna by the weirdly changed descendants of Earth’s old Martian colonists, the Scientific State, the Overthrow, the retirement of the Dissenters, the evolution of the family groups— Well, what was it? A story, a dream which had passed by while he slept, the thoughts and deeds and struggles of men unthought of in his own age.

  Napoleon had been an almost living reality to Hart. He had read Emil Ludwig, he had listened to Die Beiden Grenadieren, he had heard all the tired old jokes about crazy men with hands in their coats, he had been subjected to the wistful reminiscences of old men who had grown up in that forever lost world which came between the Congress of Vienna and the murder at Sarajevo— he had, without being unusually interested in the Corsican, lived in a world where the little man
had been a dominating influence even a century after his death. Napoleon was as much part of his background, part of the complex of events which had, inter alia, produced Philip Hart, as the sun or the moon or the banging canyons of New York.

  But could an imperial Roman transported to the twentieth century feel that a defeated dictator of a hundred years ago had existed? Would

  Napoleon be more than a dusty fiction ? Would the Roman consider it logical that Frenchmen should be below the average European height, that the French law should be completely revised, that the Louisiana Territory should be American and Haiti independent, that the Nelson column should rise in London, that the whole existing world should be, all because of one little condottiere! The Roman might realize the fact, with the top of his mind, but it would not look reasonable to him. Because he would not be one of those inevitable results.

  Hart gave up trying to make more than superficial sense out of all that had happened since the twentieth century, and simply learned the salient facts. He got a rough outline of the present political and economic status of man.

  Earth—and the Lunar cave-cities —were under one rule. The colonists on Venus, Mars, and the outer planet satellites had evolved their own societies, often radically different from that of the mother world; man himself had had to become modified before he could settle the reaches of space, an evolution which had been carried out by the eugenics of the Scientific State with ruthless completeness. There was still regular interplanetary contact, but it was infrequent. The different branches of man had too little in common by now. Once in a great while there would He a ship from one of the colonies on the nearer stars—but distances were too great, even Alpha Centauri was fifty years away, and social evolution was diverging out there.

  But could it be said that Earth was —ruled? Not in any traditional sense. The social organization was uniform, and a single council did what little administrative work the planet required. But there was nothing like a real government. History —wars, social changes, migrations, important new discoveries and concepts, events of any great significance—had been slowing for the last three centuries, ever since the family- group society had gained the ascendancy. For the last hundred years or so, nothing had really happened to mankind as a whole. Nothing!

  It might be called a philosophical anarchy. Superficially, there was perfect freedom. The general law had almost no regulations on individual behavior. There was, apparently, universal content.

  Decadent? No—not in the usual sense. These people were too magnificently healthy, too full of life and laughter. But they were certainly not progressive.

  Hart tried to make time with the nurses, and failed completely. They were all frigidly polite. The male staff members were cordial enough, but there was an inward reserve which increased with the days. Hart wondered what was the matter. His unhappiness waxed with his returning strength.

  Chang came in at last. “I think du can leave clinic no,” he said cheerily. “Du have best undergo perodic checkups for a yaar or twuw, but all medics are shoor du are gitw- ing to recover completely.” He handed the patient a set of clothes like his own, but without the group insigne.

  Hart got out of the hospital robe and climbed into the garments. “And now what?” he asked. “I’ve tried to pump everybody on what I’m supposed to do, but they’re all so evasive I haven’t really learned a thing.”

  Chang looked uncomfortable. “We have place for du,” he said. “It have taak unusually long time to analyze psychometric results duurs. Dey are su very different from ordinaary.”.

  “Well—” Hart waited impatiently. They’d been stalling him long enough.

  Chang explained as well as he could. Psychometry and preventive psychiatry were really the basis of society. The fundamental personality of the individual was determined at an early age and he was “developed” throughout life in accordance with that—conditioned to society, but not in such a rigid fashion as to interfere with really basic urges. Vocations, recreations, social life, were all planned in accordance with psychometric data.

  “Planned ?” exclaimed Hart. “How on earth can you plan everything?”

  Well, not exactly planned either. Guided. An individual had such and such an I.Q., his main interests were so and so, his personality factors were as follows—it all went into a great electronic “file”, in the powerful psychosymbology of the time. And any citizen had access to that file, with technicians to help him in its use. Thus you could find your likes, your associates, wherever they might happen to live, rather than leave it to chance encounters. It was scientifically predictable whether a friendship, a marriage, a business association, would be really of mutual profit. Naturally, everyone made use of the service, and adjusted his life accordingly.

  “But—ye gods! You mean anyone can find out all about you at any time? What kind of privacy is that ?”

  Privacy? Chang was puzzled now. The word still remained in the language, but it had come to mean simply solitude. Why should you care whether or not anyone else knew just what you were? It didn’t make you any better or worse, did it ? You could find your kind in the world, those whose company was most pleasing to you. You could know yourself, and set your goals accordingly—you could change most really undesirable characteristics, with the help of psychiatry or even of endocrinology and surgery.

  The “groups”, originally simply clans formed for mutual protection, were increasingly becoming endogamous associations of similar people. It was the group which was the real unit of society. Business, social life —all were integrated with the needs of the group, and of the world as a whole.

  For instance, it was desirable that population be limited. Overpopulation was probably the most basic cause of misery in past history. Thus the group council regulated how many children there should be in a given family. It decided how long a marriage—family association was the term now—should last; a person might have children by three or four different people, if that seemed to be for the good of human evolution.

  “But—suppose your individual doesn’t want to obey? I noticed nothing in the law compelling him to.”

  “Obedience are customary, and psychoconditioning in childhood de- libraatly plants reflexes of conformity wit custom. No sane person wants to do oderwise.”

  “But . . . but . . . talk about tyrannies !”

  “Why, nuw.” Chang was taken aback at Hart’s violent reaction. “All societies in past conditioned young. Waar du not telled to obey law and worship flag—dey still had flag worship in time duurs, did dey not?—and how it are wrong to kill and steal ? But such conditioning waar superficial, it did not always affect basic impulses, so dat dere waar tragic conflicts between individual needs and desires and de laws and customs. Frustrating, crime, insanity! No wonder de dark ages came. Today we simply condition so thoroughly—and de inculcated desides do not conflict wit basic instincts—dat no one wants to break rules which fit him su perfectly.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Well—dere are exceptions, ewen today. If dey cannot be adjusted, or will not be—since noting is legally compulsory—dey must eider be sent to space colonies or struggle trough an unhappy life on Eart, witout friends or marriage, witout ewen a group. But numbers deys gruw less all de time.”

  “Hm-m-m ... well—”

  “Ewerybody have his place in society. Ewerybody happy wit life, nobody have conflicts wit felluw mandat are goal nos. And we are close to it.”

  “It sounds nice,” muttered Hart. He shrugged. “Not much I can do about it, anyway.” His eyes swung back to the doctor’s. “Now what about me?”

  “Well—” Chang was obviously steeling himself. He smiled with a false geniality. “Well, we have seweral possibilities. Dere are a weader station, in Greenland, or a small farm in Brazil, or—”

  “Hold on!” Hart reached out and grabbed the doctor’s tunic. His throat choked with a sudden rage and, under that, a gathering horrible dismay. “What do you think you’re doing? Am I going to
be stuck somewhere out of the sight of man and forgotten?”

  “I_”

  “Come on,” snarled Hart. The fist he lifted was shaking. “Spit out the truth or you’ll be spitting out your teeth.”

  Chang disengaged himself and held the smaller man with an effortless strength. His face was twisted. “I ... I are sorry, Tov Hart,” he said, very quietly. “It waar raaly a cruel kindness to wake du. But I are afraid dat—du are right.”

  Hart sagged, the anger draining from him and leaving only a vast hollow void. Dimly, he heard Chang’s voice: “Du have nuw place in world. Du belong to nuw famly or group. Du have no traits wort perpetuating—indeed, we would not want children wit cancer tendency duurs. Psychotests show du as unstable, egocentric, unable to adjust to cityless world, to close familial relationship, to . . . anything. No one would want to associate wit completely unintegrated, hopelessly neurotic . . . foreigner.

  “Best du find a quiet place where du can serve . . . out of sight.”

  Hart rebelled. Bitterly, desperately, he tried to escape. There must be—something. He had been the admired leader of his little clique. Broad knowledge, sardonic humor, a way with women, ready money, all had combined to impress and delight. Surely the world had not changed so much!

  No compulsion was put on him. He went where and when he chose, he spent a good three months prowling this new Earth, riding the free public transport and using an unlimited government credit card to buy necessities. And he found that the world had indeed changed.

  The tall, healthy, serene folk were polite to him, and no more. But they had nothing in common with him. He belonged to no group and, for eugenic and other reasons, could not be adopted into one, and all social functions were within such alliances. He did not follow their jokes, his manners were gauche compared to the formality now accepted, his learning and background were from a period too remote to interest any but scholars. There was no underworld, no demimonde. Morality was somewhat changed, but it was never violated.