The World Jones Made by Philip K Dick

Author:Philip K Dick
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2013-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

12

OUTSIDE THE MINIATURE compound building, Doctor Rafferty bent down and showed Cussick one of the sponges indigenous to the Refuge. “This is artificial. But there are legitimate sponges like this on Venus; they were brought here and our teams made models.”

“Why not simply transplant them? Won’t the real thing grow in here?”

“I’ll explain why, a little later.” Getting to his feet he led Cus­sick to the edge of a small lapping lake. “And these are fakes, too.” From the water Rafferty grabbed a wriggling snake-like creature, with short, stubby legs that thrashed furiously. Swiftly, Rafferty twisted the head; the head came off and the creature stopped moving. “A mechanical contraption—you can see the wiring. But again, an exact model of genuine Venusian fauna.” He restored the head; once more the creature began flopping. Rafferty tossed it back in the water and it swam happily off.

“Those mountains,” Cussick said, pointing up. “That’s a backdrop based on the Venusian scene?”

“Right.” Rafferty started briskly off. “We can go up there, if you want. They step around their mountains all the time.”

As the two men strode from rock to rock, Rafferty went on with his explanation.

“This Refuge is a school, as well as an environment. It’s designed to shape them, to equate them to a nonterrestrial milieu. When they go to Venus, they’ll be prepared—at least, as well as we can arrange. Probably some of them will die; they may very well be damaged by the change. After all, we can’t be infallible; we’ve done the best we can to imitate conditions there, but it’s not letter-perfect.”

“Wait,” Cussick interrupted. “They themselves—they’re not modeled after Venusian humanoid life-forms?”

“No,” Rafferty agreed. “They’re new creations, not imitations. The original human embryos were altered on the phenotype principle: we subjected them to nonterrestrial conditions—specifically, to a scale of stresses similar to those operating on Venus. The stresses were intricate; we had plenty of failures. As soon as the altered babies were born they were popped into V-type incubators: media again reproducing the Venusian pattern. In other words, we warped each embryo, and we continued to apply the stresses after the babies were born. As you realize, if human colonists land on Venus they won’t survive. Fedgov has tried that; it’s a matter of record. But if there were a few specific physical changes, it might be possible to keep a colony alive. If we could arrange graded steps, in-between stages, locks through which they could pass…acclimatization is what we wanted. Adaptation, actually. In time, we knew, the progeny would mutate in response to external pressures. Gradually, subsequent generations would be remolded along survival lines. Many would die but some would struggle along. Eventually we’d have a quasi-human species, not physically like ourselves, but, nonetheless, human beings. Altered men, fit to live on Venus.”

“I see,” Cussick said. “This is Fedgov’s solution.”

“Absolutely. We’ll never find the exact conditions we have here on Earth—no two planets are identical. Good God, we’re lucky to find Venus, a planet with our density, with gravity, moisture, warmth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.