Incandescence

"It makes me feel used, that's what it changes." Was this the reason Lahl had singled him out, back at the node? She had drilled straight into his soul, seen to the heart of his boredom and frustration, and known how powerfully a request like Zey's would resonate for him?

"Used, how?" Parantham replied. "You think the Aloof are so morally finicky that they'd decline to throw this genetic switch themselves. but so morally bankrupt that they don't mind contriving a situation where you feel pressured to do it for them? If they wanted to do it, they'd do it. If they were capable of understanding the Arkdwellers' plight, they'd be capable of fixing it."

"I'm not talking about technology," Rakesh retorted. "Of course they could throw the switch if they wanted to. But they preferred to wash their hands of the matter, and make it someone else's responsibility."

Parantham seemed genuinely puzzled. "You mean, they asked for a second opinion on a difficult ethical question, from someone who they hoped would be better qualified? From a cousin of the Arkdwellers, a child of DNA?"

Rakesh wanted to strangle her.

Actually, what he wanted most of all was for Parantham to tell him that he had no right to intervene, and that he should leave the Arkdwellers to sleepwalk in peace. It was what he'd expected her to say when she heard Zey's plea. Unfortunately, she'd failed to oblige.

He tried to back away from all the things that were frustrating him, and analyze the situation calmly one more time.

"The Arkdwellers had this genetic mechanism forced on them by their ancestors," he said. "But it wasn't done blindly or gratuitously; it carries some very clear advantages. It keeps them satisfied with the status quo when the status quo is working. It spares them the boredom and claustrophobia that they'd otherwise suffer, cooped up in a rock, orbiting a neutron star, with no other safe place to go. But when something comes along to threaten them — a challenge of cosmic proportions, the kind of thing their ancestors faced all the way back to the Steelmakers — their intellectual powers come out of hibernation, and they get the Enlightenment on overdrive."

Parantham said, "Which is fine as far as it goes, but if some other kind of opportunity comes along — a chance to enlarge their horizons that isn't accompanied by stress and danger — how can they even assess it properly, let alone take advantage of it?"

"They can't," Rakesh replied. "It's impossible."

"Except for Zey, and those like her."

"Yes."

"But the question then," Parantham said, "is do the exceptional cases have the right to speak for the whole Ark? Zey has her own interests. If she wants to come visit the Amalgam, we can try to oblige her. But is she entitled to drag the whole of her society, without their consent, into her own state of mind?"

"Were the Arkmakers entitled," Rakesh replied, "to sentence their children to fifty million years of docility? Yes, their intentions were impeccable, and yes, they were acting under pressure, desperately hunting for a way to keep their children alive while a neutron star was bearing down on them. But they couldn't anticipate everything that the future would bring. Maybe they thought that when the next apocalypse-cum-renaissance arrived, their descendants would figure out everything and make a new set of choices for themselves — reengineering their own genome as they saw fit, to suit the next set of challenges. Maybe it was never their intention that their children would end up stranded with this ad hoc solution for so long; they just did their best and hoped that it would tide them over for a couple of million years."

"Can we be sure, though," Parantham wondered, "that this situation is entirely artificial? What if a similar mechanism had already evolved long before the neutron star approached the home world, and the Arkmakers were merely fine-tuning it?"

Rakesh said, "So if it's natural, that changes everything?"

"No, but it's not entirely irrelevant," Parantham replied. "All your drives, all your values, all your priorities come from your biological ancestors. You've removed some drives, and strengthened others, but you didn't sit down one day and say, 'From first principles — ignoring all my inherited traits — what should I be like? How should I live? What should I value?'"