She would find Valery and tell him come back. And sera Schwartz too.

They would all be happy.

Verbal Text from:

PATTERNS OF GROWTH

A Tapestudy in Genetics: #1

"An Interview with Ariane Emory": pt. 2

Reseune Educational Publications: 8970-8768-1 approved for 80+

Q: Dr. Emory, we have time perhaps for a few more questions, if you wouldn't mind.

A: Go ahead.

Q: You're one of the Specials. Some people say that you may be one of the greatest minds that's ever lived, in the class of da Vinci, Einstein, and Bok. How do you feel about that comparison?

A: I would like to have known any one of them. I think it would be interesting. I think I can guess your next question, by the way.

Q: Oh?

A: Ask it.

Q: How do you compare yourself to other people?

A: Mmmn. That's not the one. Other people. I'm not sure I know. I live a very cloistered life. I have great respect for anyone who can drive a truck in the outback or pilot a starship. Or negotiate the Novgorod subway, [laughter] I suppose that I could. I've never tried. But life is always complex. I'm not sure whether it takes more for me to plot a genotype than for someone of requisite ability to do any of those things I find quite daunting.

Q: That's an interesting point. But do you think driving a truck is equally valuable? Should we appoint Specials for that ability? What makes you important?

A: Because I have a uniqueset of abilities. No one else can do what I do. That's what a Special is.

Q: How does it feel to be a Special?

A: That's very close to the question I thought you'd ask. I can tell you being a Special is a lot like being a Councillor or holding any office: very little privacy, very high security, more attention than seems to make sense.

Q: Can you explain that last—than seems to make sense?

A: [laughter] A certain publication asked me to detail a menu of my favorite foods. A reporter once asked me whether I believed in reincarnation. Do these things make sense? I'm a psychsurgeon and a geneticist and occasionally a philosopher, in which consideration the latter question actually makes more sense to me than the first, but what in hell does either one matter to the general public? More than my science, you say? No. What the reporters are looking for is an equation that finds some balance between my psyche and their demographically ideal viewer—who is a myth and a reality: what they ask may bore everyone equally by pleasing no one exactly, but never mind: which brings us finally to the question I expect you're going to ask.

Q: That's very disconcerting.

A: Ask it. I'll tell you if we've found it yet.

Q: All right. I think we've gotten there. Is this it? What do you know that no one else does?

A: Oh, I like that better. What do I know? That's interesting. No one's ever put it that way before. Shall I tell you the question they always ask? What itfeels like to have a Special's ability. What do I know is a much wiser question. What I feel, I'll answer that quite briefly: the same as anyone—who is isolate, different, and capable of understanding the reason for the isolation and the difference.

What do I know? I know that I am relatively unimportant and my work is vastly important. That's the thing the interviewer missed, who asked me what I eat. My preference in wines is utter trivia, unless you're interested in my personal biochemistry, whichdoes interest me, and does matter, but certainly that has very little to do with an article on famous people and food, whatever that means. If that writer discovered a true connection between genius and cheeses, I am interested, and I want to interview him.

Fortunately my staff protects me against the idly curious. The state set me apart because in the aggregate the state, thepeople, if you will, know that given the freedom to work, I will work, and work for the sake of my work, because I am a monomaniac. Because I do have that emotional dimension the other reporters were trying to reach, I do have an aesthetic sense about what I do, and it applies to what one very ancient Special called the pursuit of Beauty— I think everyone can understand that, on some level. On whatever level. That ancient equated it with Truth. I call it Balance. I equate it with Symmetry. That's the nature of a Special, that's what you're really looking for: a Special's mind works in abstracts that transcend the limitations of any existing language. A Special has the Long View, and equally well the Wide View, that embraces more than any single human word will embrace, simply because communicative language is the property of the masses. And the Word, the Word with a capital W, that the Special sees, understands, comprehends in the root sense of the term, is a Word outside the experience of anyone previous. So he calls it Beauty. Or Truth. Or Balance or Symmetry. Frequently he expresses himself through the highly flexible language of mathematics; or if his discipline does not express itself readily in that mode, he has to create a special meaning for certain words within the context of his work and attempt to communicate in the semantic freight his language has accumulated for centuries. My language is partly mathematical, partly biochemical, partly semantics: I study biochemical systems—human beings—which react predictably on a biochemical level to stimuli passing through a system of receptors—hardware—of biochemically determined sensitivity; through a biochemical processor of biochemically determined efficiency—hardware again—dependent on a self-programming system which is also biochemical, which produces a uniquely tailored software capable of receiving information from another human being with a degree of specificity limited principally by its own hardware, its own software, and semantics. We haven't begun to speak of the hardware and software of the second human being. Nor have we addressed the complex dimension of culture or the possibility of devising a mathematics for social systems, the games statisticians and demographers play on their level and I play on mine. I will tell you that I leave much of the work with microstructures to researchers under my direction and I have spent more of my time in thinking than I have in the laboratory. I am approaching a degree of order in that thought that I can only describe as a state of simplicity. A very wide simplicity. Things which did not seem to be related, are related. The settling of these things into order is a pleasurable sensation that increasingly lures the thinker into dimensions that have nothing to do with the senses. Attaching myself to daily life is increasingly difficult and I sometimes find myself needing that, the flesh needs affirmation, needs sensation—because otherwise I do not, personally, exist. And I exist everywhere.

At the end I will speak one Word, and it will concern humanity. I don't know if anyone will understand it. I have a very specific hope that someone will. This is the emotional dimension. But if I succeed, my successor will do something I can only see in the distance: in a sense, Iam doing it, because getting this far is part of it. But the flesh needs rest from visions. Lives are short-term, even one extended by rejuv. I give you Truth. Someone, someday, will understand my notes.

That is myself, speaking the language not even another Special can understand, because his Beauty is different, and proceeds along another course. If you're religious you may think we have seen the same thing. Or that we must lead to the same thing. I am not, myself, certain. We are God's dice. To answer still another Special.