I hesitate even to warn you, because that frustration had an important, even a beneficial effect on my work. I reached a point in my 70's when I had surpassed every mind around me. Jane Strassen, Yanni Schwartz, Denys and Giraud Nye, and of course Florian and Catlin, were among the friends who still challenged me. But I passed even them. I went more and more inward, and found myself more and more solitary in the personal sense. Then I confess to you that I was extremely happy in my professional work, and I was able to confine my sexual energies to a mere physical release, on a very frequent basis, which, with the satisfactions of my work and the company of a few reliable friends, kept me busy. In some ways I was very lonely, but in the main I was happy. It was a very productive period for me.
But now, above a century, I know that I am launched on projectsnone of which I will finish, that I am doing things that may save humankind or damn it, and I will never know the outcome.
Most of all that anger drives me now, impatience with the oncoming wall, impatience with time and the limits of those around me; there is no chance to stop and breathe, or rest. I can no longer travel freely, no longer fly, the dream I had of seeing space is something I have no right to indulge in, because security is so difficult and finishing this work is so important. Sex used to relieve the tensions; now it interlocks with them, because the anger is linked with it and with everything I do.
The most terrible thing—I have hurt Florian. I have never done that in my life. Worse than that—I enjoyed it. Can a child understand how much that hurt? Worst of all—Florian understands me; and forgives me. Whatever you do, young Ari,use the anger, don't let it useyou.
Because the anger will come, the pain will come, because you are not like everyone else, no more than I could be.
You arenot my life's work. I hope that does not touch you in your vanity, and that you will understand why I reactivated my psychogenesis study and devoted so much of my time to creating you. My life's work is not psychogenesis, but sociogenesis, and no one but you has ever heard that word in any serious context. I have shifted the entire course of humanity by the things I have done. Your own unique perspective as a psychogenetic replicate can tell you something of the damage that might be done to Union if people becameaware of what I have done. Ithad to be done, by everything that I saw.
But I worked increasingly alone, without checks, and without consultation with anyone, because therewas no one who understood what I understand.
I can tell you in capsule form, young Ari,as I have told the press and told the Council repeatedly: but few seem to understand the basics of what I am saying, because it runs counter to short-term goals and perceptions of well-being. I have not been able to model simply enough the complex of equations that we deal with; and I fear demagogues. Most of all I fear short-term thinkers.
The human diaspora, the human scattering, is the problem, but Centrism is not the answer. The rate of growth that sustains the technological capacity that makes civilization possible is now exceeding the rate of cultural adaptation, and distance is exceeding our communications. The end will become more and more like the beginning, scattered tribes of humans across an endless plain, in pointless conflict—or isolate stagnation—unless we can condense experience, encapsulate it, replicate it deliberately in CIT deep-sets—unless psychogenesis can work on a massive scale, unless it can become sociogenesisand exceed itself as I hope you will exceed me. Human technology as an adaptive response of our species has passed beyond manipulation of the environment; beyond the manipulation of our material selves; beyond the manipulation of mind and thought; now, having brought us out of the cradle it must modify our responses to the universe at large. Human experience is generating dataflow at a rate greater than individuals can comprehend or handle; and the rate is still increasing. We must begin compression: we must compress experience in the same way human history compresses itself into briefer and briefer instruction—and events on which all history depended rate only a line in passing mention.
Ultimately only the wisdom is important, not the event which produced it. But one must know accurately what those things are.
One must pass the right things on. Experience is a brutal and an imprecise teacher at best.
And the time at which all humanity will be within reach, accessible to us—is so very brief.
You will see more than I could, young Ari. You may well be the only mind of your day able to grapple with the problem: I hope that events have handed you my power undiminished; but no matter, if I have fitted you to hold on to it I have also fitted you to acquire it. Most of all, govern your own self. If you survive to reach the power I have had, you will walk a narrow boundary between megalomania and divinity. Or you will let that anger reach humankind; or you will abdicate in cowardice.
If I have failed with you, I have failed in everything, and I may have created nothing worse than presently exists; or I may have doomed at least half of humanity to wars or to stifling tyranny.
If I have succeeded, there is still work to be done, to keep the hand on the helm. Situations change.
If I had done nothing at all, I foresaw a war that the human species might not survive: too much of it resides only on two planets and depends on too few production centers. We are too young in space; our support systems are still too fragile, and our value systems still contain elements of the stone ax and the spear.
That conviction is the only moral assurance I will ever have.
Study the Company Wars. Study the history of Earth. Learn what we are capable of.
Study Gehenna. This program has ascertained re-contact has been made. People have survived there. Its generations are shorter than ours. Gehenna is the alarm system.
Your Security clearance is now active in the Science Bureau with rank of: Department head, Reseune Administrative Territory.
Further explanation is filed in Reseune Security: access via Security 10, keyword: clearance.
vi
"No, ser," Ari said, hands folded on the table. The microphones picked up her voice and carried it, making it huge, a caricature of a young girl's voice. She sat by herself at a table facing the Nine. Uncle Giraud sat in the Science seat; there were Nasir Harad, and Nguyen Tien; Ludmilla deFranco; Jenner Harogo; Mikhail Corain; Mahmud Chavez; and Vladislaw Khalid—whose looks toward her were absolute hostility. Corain had asked the question.
"No, ser, I won't give you a transcript. I've said why. It wouldn't be all of it. And that's worse than nothing. I'm tellingyou the important things. Adm. Azov sent the colony even when Ari told him not; she didn't want it because it was top dangerous. And he went ahead.