Childhood's End (19 page)

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days, getting the feel of the place. If they decide they'd like to join us, then we let them take the battery of psychological tests whicharereallyourmainlineofdefence. About athirdof the applicants are rejected, usually fur reasons which don't reflect on them and which wouldn't matter outside. Those who pass go home long enough to settle their affairs, and then rejoin us. Sometimes, they change their minds at this stage, but that's very unusual and almost invariably through personal reasons outside their controL Our tests are practically a hundred-per-cent reliable now: the people they pass are the people who really want to come."

"Suppose anyone changed their mind later?" asked Jean anxiously.

"Then they could leave. There'd be no difficulty. It's happened once or twice."

There was a long silence. Jean looked at George, who was rubbing thoughtfully at the side-whiskers currently popular in artistic circles. As long as they weren't burning their boats behind them, she was not unduly worried. The Colony looked an interesting place, and certainly wasn't as cranky as she'd feared. And the children would love it. That, in the final analysis, was all that mattered.

They moved in six weeks later. The single-storied house was small, but quite adequate for a family which had no intention of being greater than four. All the basic labour-saving devices were in evidence: at least, Jean admitted, there was no danger of reverting to the dark ages of domestic drudgery. It was slightly disturbing, however, to discover that there was a kitchen. In a community of this size, one would normally expect to dial Food Central, wait five minutes, and then get whatever meal they had selected. Individuality was all very well, but this, Jean feared, might be taking things a little too far. She wondered darkly if she would be expected to make the family's clothes as well as to prepare its meals. But there was no spinning-wheel between the automatic dish-washer and the radar range, soit wasn't quite as bad as that....

Of course, the rest of the house still looked very bare and raw. They were its first occupants, and it would be some time before all this aseptic newness had been converted into a warm, human home, The children, doubtless, would catalyze the

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process rather effectively. There was already (though Jean did not know it yet) an unfortunate victim of Jeffrey's expiring in the bath, as a result of that young man's ignorance of the fundamental difference between fresh and salt water.

Jean moved to the still uncurtained window and looked across the Colony. It was a beautiful place, there was no doubt

of that. The house stood on the western slopes of the low bill that dominated, because of the absence of any other competition, the island of Athens. Two kilometres to the north she could see the causeway-a thin knife-edge dividing the water- that led to Sparta. That rocky island, with its brooding volcanic cone, was such a contrast to this peaceful spot that it sometimes frightened her. She wondered how, the scientists could be so certain that it would never reawaken and overwhelm them all.

A wavering figure coming up the slope, keeping carefully to the palm-trees' shade in defiance of the rule of the road, attracted her eye. George was returning from his first conference. It was time to stop day-dreaming and get busy about the house.

A metallic crash announced the arrival of George's bicycle.

Jean wondered how long it was going to take them both to learn to ride. This was yet another unexpected aspect of life on the island. Private cars were not permitted, and indeed were unnecessary, since the greatest distance one could travel in a straight line was less than fifteen kilometres. There were various community-owned service vehicles-trucks, ambulances, and fire-engines, all restricted, except in cases of real emergency, to fifty kilometres an hour. As a result the inhabitants of Athens had plenty of exercise, uncongested streets

-and no traffic accidents.

George gave his wife a perfunctory peck and collapsed with a sigh of relief into the nearest chair.

"Phew I" he said, mopping his brow. "Everyone raced past me on the way up the hill, so I suppose people do get used wit.

I think I've lost ten kilograms already."

"What sort of a day did you have?" asked Jean dutifully. She hoped George would not be too exhausted to help with the unpacking.

"Very stimulating. Of course 1 can't remember half the people I met, but they all seemed very pleasant. And the theatre is just as good as I'd hoped. We're starting work next

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week on Shaw's 'Back to Methuselah'. I'll be in complete

charge of sets and stage design. It'll make a change, not having

a dozen people to tell me what I can't do. Yes, I think we're going to like it here."

"Despite the bicycles?"

George summoned up enough energy to grin.

"Yes," he said. "In a couple of weeks I won't even notice this little hill of ours."

He didn't really believe it-but it was perfectly true. It was another month, however, before Jean ceased to pine for the

car, and discovered all the things one could do with one's own

kitchen.

New Athens was not a natural and spontaneous growth like the city whose name it bore. Everything about the Colony was deliberately planned, as the result of many years of study by a group of very remarkable men. It had begun as an open conspiracy against the Overlords, an implicit challenge to their policy if not to their power. At first the Colony's sponsors had been more than half certain that Karellen would neatly frustrate them, but the Supervisor had done nothing-absolutely nothing. This was not quite as reassuring as might have been expected. Karellen had plenty of time: he might be preparing a delayed counterstroke. Or he might be so certain of the project's failure that he felt no need to take any action against it.

That the Colony would fail had been the prediction of most people. Yet even in the past, long before any real knowledge of social dynamics had existed, there had been many communities devoted to special religious or philosophical ends. It was true that their mortality rate had been high, but some had survived. And the foundations of New Athens were as secure as modern science could make them.

There were many reasons for choosing an island site. Not the least important were psychological. In an age of universal air transport, the ocean meant nothing as a physical barrier, but it still gave a sense of isolation. Moreover, a limited land area made it impossible for too many people to live in the Colony. The maximum population was fixed at a hundred

thousand: more than that, and the advantages inherent in a small, compact community would be lost. One of the aims of the founders was that any member of New Athens should

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know all the other citizens who shared his interests-and as many as one or two per cent of the remainder as well.

The man who had been the driving force behind New Athens was a Jew. And, like Moses, he had never lived to enter his promised land, for the Colony had been founded three years after his death.

He had been born in Israel, the last independent nation ever to come into existence-and, therefore, the shortest lived. The end of national sovereignty had been felt here perhaps more bitterly than anywhere else, for it is hard to lose a dream which one has just achieved after centuries of striving.

Ben Salomon was no fanatic, but the memories of his childhood must have determined, to no small extent, the philosophy he was to put into practice. He could just remember what the world had been before the advent of the Overlords, and had no wish to return to it. Like not a few other intelligent and well-meaning men, he could appreciate all that Karellen had done for the human race, while still being unhappy about the Supervisor's ultimate plans. Was it possible, he sometimes said to himself that despite all their enormous intelligence the Overlords did not really understand mankind, and were making a terrible mistake from the best of motives? Suppose, in their altruistic passion for justice and order, they had determined to reform the world, but had not realized that they were destroying the soul of man?

The decline had barely started, yet the ftrst symptoms of decay were not hard to discover. Salomon was no artist, but he had an acute appreciation of art and knew that his age could riot match the achievements of previous centuries in any single field. Perhaps matters would right themselves in due course, when the shock of encountering the Overlord civilization had worn off. But it might not, and a prudent man would consider taking out an insurance policy.

New Athens was that policy. Its establishment had taken twenty years and some billions of Pounds Decimal-a relatively trivial factor, therefore, of the world's total wealth. Nothing had happened for the first fifteen years: everything had happened in the last five.

Salomon's task would have been impossible had he not been able to convince a handful of the world's most famous artists that his plan was sound. They had sympathized because it appealed to their egos, not because it was important for the

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race. But, once convinced, the world had listened to them and given both moral and material support. Behind this spectacular façade of temperamental talent the real architects of the Colony had laid their plans.

A society consists of human beings whose behaviour as individuals is unpredictable. But if one takes enough of the basic units, then certain laws begin to appear-as was discovered long ago by life-insurance companies. No-one can tell what individuals will die in a given time-yet the total number of deaths can be predicted with considerable accuracy.

There are other, subtler laws, first glimpsed in the early twentieth century by mathematicians such as Weiner and Rashavesky. They had argued that such events as economic depressions, the results of armament races, the stability of social groups, political elections, and so on could be analysed by the correct mathematical techniques. The great difficulty was the enormous number of variables, many of them hard to define in numerical terms. One could not draw a set of curves and state definitely: "When this line is reached, it will mean war." And one could never wholly allow for such utterly unpredictable events as the assassination of a key figure or the effects of some new scientific discovery-still less such natural catastrophes as earthquakes or floods, which might haves profound effect on large numbers of people and the social groups in which they lived.

Yet one could do much, t1~ianks to the knowledge patiently accumulated during the past hundred years. The task would have been impossible without the aid of the giant computing machines that could perform the work of a thousand human calculators in a matter of seconds. Such aids had been used to the utmost when the Colony was planned.

Even so, the founders' of New Athens could only provide the soil and the climate in which the plant they wished to cherish might-or might not-come to flower. As Salomon himself had remarked: "We can be sure of talent: we can only pray for genius." But it was a reasonable hope that in such a concentrated solution some int~resting reactions would take place. Few artists thrive in solitude, and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests.

So far, the conflict had produced worthwhile results in sculpture, music, literary criticism and film-making. It was still too early to see if the group working on historical research

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would fulfil the hopes of its instigators, who were frankly aiming at restoring mankind's pride in its own achievements. Painting still languished, which supported the view of those who considered that static, two-dimensional forms of art had no further possibilities.

It was noticeable-though a satisfactory explanation fbr this had not yet been produced-that time played an essential part in the .Colony's most successful artistic achievements. Even its sculpture was seldom immobile. Andrew Carson's intriguing volumes and curves changed slowly as one watched, according to complex p~tterns that the mind could appreciate, even if it could not fully comprehend them. Indeed, Carson claimed, with some truth, to have taken the "mobiles" of a century before to their ultimate conclusion, and thus to have wedded sculpture and ballet.

Much of the Colony's musical experimenting was, quite consciously, concerned with what might be called "time span". What was the briefest note that the mind could grasp-or the longest that it could tolerate without boredom? Could the result be varied by conditioning or by the use of appropriate orchestration? Such problems were discussed endlessly, and the arguments were not purely academic. They had resulted in some extremely interesting compositions.

But it was in the art of the cartoon film, with its limitless possibilities, that New Athens had made its most successful experiments. The hundred years since the time of Disney had still left much undone in this most flexible of all mediums. On the purely realistic side, results could be produced indistinguishable from actual photography-much to the contempt of those who were developing the cartoon along abstract lines.

The group of artists and scientists that had so far done least was the one that had attracted the greatest interest-and the greatest alarm. This was the team working on "total identification". The history of the cinema gave the clue to their actions. First, sound, then colour, then stereoscopy, then Cinerama, had made the old 'moving pictures" more and more like reaiity itself. Where was the end of the story? Surely, the final stage would be reached when the audience forgot it was an audience, and became part of the action. To achieve this would involve stimulation ~f all the Senses, and perhaps h

nosis as wcll, but many beheved it to be practical. When

goal was attained, there would be an enormous enrichment of

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human experience. A man could become-for a while, at least-any other person, and could take part in any conceivable adventure, real or imaginary. He could even be plant or animal, if it proved possible to capture and record the sense impressions of other living creatures. And when the "programme" was over, he would have acquired a memory as vivid as any experience in his actual life-indeed, indistinguishable from reality itself.