5. Augmentation Sequence

Slowly, the number cloud ceased to swarm. The brainpath information and other internal and external code seemed normal. The streams of data flowed across the images of virtual cells like so many ripples in an endlessly complex pond, or like the dances of light in a sky filled with twinkling stars, but as if some god could compress the billions of years of stellar evolution into a few awed sighs of time.

Everything was done save the final step.

The final step was one he understood. Indeed, he knew it well. It was a mathematical representation of the core formulae of his Zurich computer run, heavily modified (of course) due to the radical differences in brain-cell layout between himself and Del Azarchel, as between any two humans.

“You’ve stopped,” said Del Azarchel. “Why do you hesitate?”

“I can turn you back into a Posthuman,” Montrose said slowly. “All I need to do is start the major augmentation sequence.”

“To what effect?

“It was just what you said before. I am trying to solve the scaling problem. The lower hemisphere of your virtual brain will swell up to twice its size.”

“What will that do to my balance in my seat of emotions?”

“Well, I reckon I don’t know. The human brain is basically a hierarchy, a man riding a horse riding a ’gator. The part of you that thinks like a horse is about to turn into a herd. The part in the back of your brain that has all the lizardy impulses—aggression, territory, whatnot—that is about to turn into an army of dinosaurs. I hope the other version of me knew what he was doing.”

“And if he didn’t?” There was a hint of dry humor in the voice, and maybe a hint of cold courage.

“If he didn’t, and I trigger the sequence, you’ll go mad as a hatter, and Del Azarchel—well, he’ll have to delete you.”

“Delete? Call it murder. I detest when things are not named by their right names.”

“I ain’t sure it is murder. Murder is the unlawful killing of the human being without justification and with malice aforethought. You ain’t properly alive. If this works, I don’t see how you’ll be human.”

“If it works, I will be more than human, not less.”

“You’re a copy. A pattern of electric impulses in a diamond-rod-logic container.”

“I could say the same of you, except your container is three pounds of convoluted gray matter behind your eyes.”

“How do I know you are self-aware?”

A chuckle. The mask said archly, “I will make you a bargain, Cowhand. You prove to me that you are self-aware, using any method you wish, and, once I see how it is done, I will assay a similar proof back to you.”

“But you cannot be human. You don’t eat, don’t mate, and don’t die.”

“The electrical energy that runs me and the chemical energy that runs you both come from plants. Yours by way of lunch, I suppose, mine by way of petrol in some generator room here on campus. Both ultimately come from the sun. Merely the form differs. I can certainly die; you almost killed me just now when you tripped. Come! You are being sophomoric! Surely the nature of man is in his reason, not in whether he eats bread.”

“Actually, I think your power is not from our sun. There are matter-antimatter colliders in orbit somewhere, and they beam power in maser form to ground stations.”

“Aha! Then my power comes from the stars! In that case I am not human. You win the argument, Counselor.”

“Pox! Now you are just being sarcastic!”

“My ability to deride you therefore proves my human nature beyond doubt. Derideo ergo sum. I mock, therefore I am.”

Montrose looked left and right. He was not sure where the door to this chamber was, because the doorframe blended into the library cloth walls.

“You seem nervous.”

“Nope. Just damn cold. I don’t think I should start the augmentation until Del Azarchel is here.”

“I am here.”

“I mean your meaty version.”

“What need have I of him? His permission? I serve what is higher than myself, not lower.”

“You would not be here if it weren’t for him. So if he’s your father, he wants to see you graduate. Besides, if something goes wrong, I’d rather it be his finger pulled the trigger. But if it all goes right … it will be a new era. Ma never let me open my gifts at Christmastime all by my lonesome, even if I got up an hour before them, at 4:30. Had to wait for my brothers. Shouldn’t we wait for Del Azarchel?”

The blind-seeming eyes narrowed, the lids falling like pale, smooth windowshades over mathematically perfect spheres.

“Menelaus, are you a friend to me? Are you worthy of my trust?”

“Sure, Blackie! I mean, uh, I mean the real Blackie—he’s my friend.”

“Did I not do everything he did for you? Those memories are mine as well, those personality traits—everything.”

“But those memories are just electrophonotic patterns in your brain.”

“And his memories are just electrochemical patterns in his.”

“Oh, come on. If I owed him twenty bucks, and then he copied himself into you, would I owe forty? If he made a hundred copies, would I owe two thousand?”

“If I commit murder, and find out later that my first copy committed it, with the memories of the deed merely passed on to me, may I render up him to be hanged, while I go unpunished? The memories of the crime, the personality traits of the murderer, are still mine. Suppose he made a hundred copies, or two? Or should all who did the evil be rendered up for judgment?”

“You’re asking me? I’d spare not a damn one of them. The evil men do, if it is copied over, must copy over the vengeance as well. Otherwise you’d just make a new copy to do your murdering for you, and let him dance at the end of the rope while you went dancing with his girl.”

“By the same token, the good a man does, if copied over, must copy his reward.”

“But you not are really the real Blackie for real. You are just built to think you are.”

“Then the builders have not built in vain, but have been successful, for so I do indeed think. I have suffered for you. Do you owe me nothing?”

“Suffered how? You cannot feel pain. You’re perfect.”

“Not now. But I recall the pain, then, in the dark.”

“When?”

“Then! In the dark! When I stood between you and cannibalism, killing men I knew and loved. The long watches when I was weak with thirst and growing weaker, and I knew that there was a way to suck the moisture out of the cells of your frozen body—a body that, as far as any rational evidence could prove, contained nothing but a broken brain, broken because a fool in his pride shoved a needle into its delicate workings!”

The face of Del Azarchel drew a deep, ragged breath. “I was not perfect, not then. I suffered thirst. Wealth was measured in ounces of water. That was what we traded and swapped and bribed enemy crewmen to our side. At that time, you were the perfect one, were you not? You slept in comfort. You were rich, in the way we measured riches. And I was the beggar again. Do you know what I thought about, when I floated next to your coffin in my parka, my breath too dry to steam, my homemade toy gun in my hand, and my eyes seeing only floating hallucinations caused by light-starvation? Do know what I thought about?”

Montrose bowed his head. He knew. “That damned boot. The one you found in the gutter when you were a kid.”

“That damned boot,” said the face of Del Azarchel, nodding solemnly.

“OK,” said Montrose. “So I owe you. What do you want?”

“I want you to trust me. Throw the switch. Make me into what is beyond Man.”

“You’re not afraid?”

The pallid mask smiled, and its lids were half-closed. “Deeply and terribly afraid. That is why I am not in the room, no doubt. The previous version of me, I mean. He is likely to be monitoring from a distance, in another room, weeping. But I do not think you will fail. I think you have done what you set out to do.”