We by John Dickinson

Author:John Dickinson [Dickinson, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385617895
Publisher: RHCB Digital
Published: 2010-02-22T23:00:00+00:00

01:04:1337 Your 28:03:1603 and 29:03:1132. Congratulations. Relevant updates will be transmitted to your files. Keep us informed. Good luck. Ends.

‘I suppose you thought they would order an abortion,’ said Lewis coldly. ‘You must have known we would not wish it, but you thought you could get Earth to overrule us. You wanted it to bombard us with World-Ear knowledge, so that in the end we would be persuaded despite ourselves. But it wouldn’t have worked. I’ve thought about this for years. Nothing Earth could say would persuade me now.

‘And you don’t understand Earth, Paul. It is not interested in us as people. It thinks of us as a thing. A seed. As long as it thought the seed was sterile, it would have left us alone. Now it knows we have begun to germinate. It will watch us more closely. It will think about expanding the colony and about how to get the World Ear to function out here after all. This is the worst possible thing you could have done.’

‘She will die,’ said Paul harshly.

‘I know there’s a risk! Do you think I don’t care? Do you think she doesn’t know it? She is a very, very brave woman! But we both know this is the only future there is.’

‘Future? What future?’

‘For humanity. We are the last humans left. Don’t you see that? We are the last chance to build a community in which individuals are free to respect one another. And we can! We have the mistakes of Earth for our guide. We can observe the norms and behaviours that inoculate us against the disease of the We. But that’s no good if it stops with the four of us! If it stops with us, we’ve failed! Don’t you see how much it matters?’

‘You are crazy,’ Paul said. ‘Mad.’

‘Think about what you’re saying, Paul. Just think about it. If we die out, that’s the end. There’s no one else.’

‘Mad! This won’t work!’

‘Mad? What do you mean by mad? Which of us is mad, Paul? An ant will go mad if it is taken from its nest. But a human taken from his community will build himself another one, however he can. Are you ant or human, Paul?’

‘You want to breed more people,’ said Paul, reddening. ‘You have to make a bigger station. You can’t do that.’

‘What do you know about how many people the station can hold? Which chambers I can pressurize, heat and keep in balance? With three hundred per cent redundancy I could support another twelve people without even trying! They could be there now and you wouldn’t know the difference!’

‘So you jam the radio to make Earth send you a telmex! What next? Will you breed a new virus, to make them send us a microbiologist? Break the computers to make them send an engineer? Man, woman, man, woman – yes?’

Lewis stared at him. ‘What are you saying, Paul? What the hell are you saying?’

‘You said Earth sends people into space to make children. No. That was a lie.

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