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19

There was little point in worrying about immortality if the world was about to end—not as something of immediate concern, anyway. But the thought of reviving that project later, to extend existence indefinitely in some unimaginable future life on some distant star, was another matter. Accordingly, Sarvik wound up his relationship with Replimaticon on terms that Pezamin Greel and Marduk Alifrenz, his two accomplices there, found surprisingly generous considering the abruptness of Sarvik's announcement. His reason was that he wanted to leave the door open to renew his association with them later. Since they were already familiar with his immortality project and its technicalities, he had them in mind for two of the slots he'd been assigned in Breakout, but he didn't want to reveal anything about that at present.

Moving house to Gweths was easy enough. All he had to do was rent a bolt-on motor unit for his balloon house, secure the glassware and other loose items, and wait for the wind to blow in the right direction. GENIUS 5 transferred itself via satellite links, leaving an instruction in the Replimaticon system that would erase the original copy on receipt of a signal from the other end. Borijans had often debated the question of identity and how they would deal with the problem of creating multiple copies if they ever reached the stage of being able to transmit themselves from place to place electronically. As open-minded about it as they tried to be, most were simply unable to feel any sense of continuity with a hypothetical replica of themselves happening to come into existence possibly millions of miles away. If the original was obliterated in the process, they would have ceased to exist, whatever else the copy might think. But an intelligence that had been electronic from its beginnings apparently suffered from no such qualms.

Sarvik found a leafy, sheltered valley with a lake to moor his house by, ten miles inland from the Farworlds Tower, and GENIUS took up residence in some of the most sophisticated hardware on Turle. Gradually, as Sarvik became more engrossed in the details of Breakout, familiarity led to acceptance, and in time the underlying morbidness of what made the undertaking necessary oppressed his thoughts less. As he applied himself to the task, his thoughts of all the worldly cares that had ruled his life and were no longer important faded. In their place, he found himself entertaining exciting visions of a future with whole new dimensions of experience and undreamed-of possibilities. It was only when GENIUS got to examining the Farworlds plans in detail that Sarvik got his first premonition that Breakout might not, in the time available, be feasible at all.

* * *

A vertical line divided GENIUS's screen into two halves. One side was empty except for two small designs: one a wrench crossed on top of a gear cog, the other a symbolic representation of one of the robot freighters that brought products back from the remote manufacturing complexes. The other side was filled with a hierarchy of symbols arranged in descending levels, with connecting lines showing the dependencies of the higher groupings on the lower. At the top was an icon of one of the proposed generation ships, and immediately beneath it, a short line of figures representing Borijans. To the left below them a cloud formation with slanting lines of rain represented an atmosphere, with sublevels below that branching off into a tree of chemical formulas and symbols for temperature, pressure, physical dynamics, and all the other properties essential to supporting life. Another tree alongside it depicted a city habitat with its supporting agencies and services. And a third, to the right, showed food supplies, broken down into categories of animal, agricultural, and synthetic, and below them, depictions of irrigation, microorganism populations, soil chemistry, and other factors they depended on. As Sarvik watched, a bewildering web of cross-connections added themselves to show how climatic factors would affect the soil, how the rocks would affect the oceans, and how just about nothing could change without altering everything else. GENIUS's voice narrated:

"Setting up a colony of Borijans is going to be a more complicated business than these people seem to have realized. It's not just a question of upgrading the Searcher operations, which is all they've had any experience of. A manufacturing complex that just has to send robot ships back to Kov is pretty straightforward by comparison. Machines just need a ball of rock solid enough to plant foundations on, and environmental conditions short of the extremes that would upset electronics. But this carbon chemistry that you guys are stuck with is something else. First you have to have breathable atmospheres, and all the ingredients and physical parameters have got to be just right. Then you need watery surfaces with a tolerable chemical mix, a benign climate, and not too much or too little gravity. Then there's all this food to think about, because you run on energy from slow oxidation instead of conduction. The complexity of how it all interrelates is horrendous. The truth is, nobody knows if what they're talking about comes anywhere close to reality. The simulations are all based on assumptions and unsubstantiated theories. There haven't been any crewed interstellar missions to test anything. You judge a kitchen by what comes out of it, not what goes in."

"No one's expecting to design a planet," Sarvik said. "All we need to get started is something reasonably close to the way this one is. And surely they've got enough data on that."

GENIUS presented a view of star-speckled emptiness receding to infinity. "But it narrows down the choice of worlds dramatically and makes the probability of finding one a correspondingly protracted process. Nobody knows what percentage of worlds is likely to meet all the requirements or, therefore, the amount of time it would take to find one. All the figures that have been used are guesses." A picture appeared of a Searcher modified as proposed, bristling with question marks. "So, for how long should the essential systems on the generation ships be designed to function? Nobody knows. What mission duration should be assumed? Ditto. What are the limits of the presently available technologies? You tell me."

Sarvik slumped back in his chair. "Surely not. It can't really be that bad." It was a feeble response. The shock of what GENIUS was telling him was still registering.

"You don't want to hear my estimate of the odds of it working," GENIUS told him.

Sarvik stared numbly into the distance through the console panel in front of him. "Do you think this explains why Palomec Jindriss was so concerned about technology the first time I talked to him?" he asked at last.

"Not my department. I don't do wet-brain psychology," GENIUS answered.

Sarvik pulled himself together slowly and exhaled a long breath. "So, what's your summary assessment of the whole thing?" he asked. "Is Breakout a feasible solution?"

"In the time that's available? No, I don't think it is," GENIUS replied. A picture appeared on the screen of a trash basket stuffed with rolled-up plans.

* * *

Sarvik flew to Hoditia and rented a flymobile to take him across to the island of Vayso, planning to see how much of this was new to Palomec Jindriss. Jindriss met him in the roof-level reception lobby of the ASH headquarters building. He had reserved a small meeting room by the main library where they could talk privately.

Jindriss's expression weakened, and he seemed to age more by the minute as Sarvik related his findings. Even before he had finished speaking, Sarvik could tell he was not making any great revelations. Jindriss had known, but he had buried the knowledge deep inside his mind somewhere, out of sight of consciousness, persuading himself that Farworlds might come up with something. This was probably the first time he had faced the truth honestly and squarely.

"Yes, yes, you're right. Of course most of it is based on speculation," Jindriss admitted tiredly. "Where could anyone possibly get the hard data? As you say, there have been no expeditions. There hasn't been time to even know what the right questions are, never mind be sure of the answers."

Sarvik was aghast. "And that's acknowledged generally? The other scientists here at ASH who are part of it—they know that at best the whole thing is a gamble against all the odds?"

"It's not a simple matter of being objective about facts, as you make it sound," Jindriss said. "Self-defense reactions set in. The mind protects itself in situations like this. People immerse themselves totally in the only answer they've got. They shut everything else out."

"What about the engineers at Farworlds?" Sarvik objected. "The ones who are supposed to be implementing the solutions. They have to preserve a measure of realism, surely."

"Most of them believe the cover story for Breakout—that it's time to get out of the Kovar System. They think the time pressure is for political reasons, to exploit Farworlds' edge over the competition. In other words, to them the urgency isn't 'real,' and the problems will all get fixed eventually." Jindriss made a resigned gesture. "Of course, the senior executives who are tagged to go know the truth. But in their case we have protective psychology at work again. A collective unreason close to panic has taken hold. Keeping busy and at least doing something provides a day-to-day analgesic that's better than the despair that would come with doing nothing. The rest just go along with the pressure without knowing the reason for it."

All of which was understandable, Sarvik could see. It was the only choice any of them had. But it was not the only choice he had.

* * *

The next day he took the flymobile over to Pygal and kept an appointment he had made to see Alifrenz and Greel. It was time to renew their relationship.

Through them, he still had access to things that were going on in Replimaticon and certain other places Replimaticon was involved with, such as Universal Robocon. For Sarvik's previous work on his immortality project had suggested a different solution to the whole problem of escaping from Turle. It would need Replimaticon, and it would need access to the computers that planned and programmed the Searcher missions, which his privileged position at Farworlds already gave him. But apart from that, he no longer cared particularly whether the ASH-Farworlds plans for interstellar colonies were feasible, or if a single generation ship ever managed to lift itself out from its assembly orbit.

For the solution to it all that Sarvik had in mind didn't involve fragile, perishable biological Borijan bodies—and all the attendant complications of sustaining, nurturing, and reproducing them—at all.

 

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