Prisoners of Tomorrow (31 page)

“That’s just about what happened with Nazi Germany, too,” McCain said as he worked.

“Precisely. They weren’t ready to become a liberal democracy when the Allies tried to impose it on them after 1918. They, too, yearned for the kind of authority they were used to, and for a strong leader who would take responsibility and make the decisions.” Koh shrugged. “And they found one.” He lifted a hand from his rake to gesture vaguely at the colony around them. “And the same thing is true of this Soviet political monstrosity. Progressive? Pah! Nothing of the kind. It’s the last relic of an order that’s on its way out.”

“You and Scanlon seem to talk about that kind of thing a lot,” McCain said.

“Aren’t all the Irish supposed to be philosophers of life, ‘which means everything’?” Koh replied.

McCain straightened up and drew a handkerchief from his pants pocket to wipe the sheen of perspiration from his forehead. “Getting back to Scanlon,” he said. “About four days ago he told me—”

Koh cut him off with a wave of his hand. “You can save yourself the lengthy explanation.” He nodded toward the truck a hundred yards back along the road, which carried the tools, lunch bags, and other oddments. “When you pick up your jacket, look in the inside pocket. You will find something there that should answer your questions. Think of it as a gesture of good faith by the escape committee. They feel there might be grounds for you and them to get together. I get the impression that you feel the same way.”

“Then it does really exist?”

“Certainly.”

“But how? . . .”

Koh smiled and shook his head. “Never mind how I know the things I know. Let’s just say, Mr. Earnshaw, that both of us know something about the intelligence business.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

When the gas pedal of an automobile is pressed harder, the vehicle goes faster. Within the throttle’s operating range, the output of the process changes smoothly with input. The mathematical relationship connecting the two is an example of a “linear” function. When pressure is steadily increased on the trigger of a gun, on the other hand, the operation is markedly nonlinear: nothing much happens until the mechanism is on the point of tripping, after which an infinitesimally small further increase of input brings about an abrupt and spectacular change in system output—the gun fires.

Most mathematical representations of nature take the form of functions that change smoothly. The real-world processes that they model, however, invariably lead to discontinuities when taken far enough, and the models turn out to be merely approximations that are close enough to be useful over limited ranges. Thus, solids eventually melt, liquids boil, a star condenses, or a new species emerges: suddenly a phase change occurs in which the former behavior breaks down, new laws supplant the old, and all the previous limits and projections cease to mean anything. These boundaries are the places where the really interesting things in nature happen. Crossing them is what is called Evolution.

Paula had received her first insight into the astonishing complexities that can arise from nonlinear systems when she was studying complex-number theory at college. A “complex” number consists of two independent parts, like the latitude and longitude components of a map reference. And like the points on a map, the total field of all complex numbers can be represented by the infinity of points on a plane—unlike ordinary, one-part numbers, all of which can be represented by the points on an endless line. Now, infinitely many points exist between any two points on a plane, however close to each other they might be; and an infinity of numbers exists between any two of the numbers in the complex-number plane. Therefore, if an arbitrary path is traced across the plane, the value of the numbers that the path passes over will change smoothly with the distance moved: an infinitesimally small change of position will yield an infinitesimally small change in number value. There are no sudden jumps.

The function that particularly excited Paula is called the “Mandelbrot Set,” and has been described as the most complicated object known to mathematics. Yet the method of generating it is amazingly uncomplicated. A point is taken on the complex plane, and the number that it corresponds to is used as the input to a simple equation. The equation is then evaluated to produce a result. Depending on the range that the result falls in, a color is assigned to the corresponding point on a display screen. Repeating the procedure for all the other points generates a color map of how the result obtained changes from place to place for the originally smooth-changing number field. The outcome is not a mixture of formless patches as might be supposed, which would denote lumplike properties varying steadily from region to region. Instead, what emerges is highly organized, infinitely detailed
structure!
Totally unexpected discontinuities and instabilities appear, in which the minutest variations of input send the results fleeing away to infinity; and yet a curious connectedness remains, producing spirals, snowflakes, filaments, and strangely beautiful compound forms, ever-varying in an unending regress of successive levels of detail down to whatever resolution might be explored.

Reflecting on how a simple mathematical relationship could create such astounding richness of form out of nothing more than a smoothly graded number field, Paula had suddenly made the connection to the generation of form and structure in the natural world—for the shapes and whirls and connecting threads revealed in the graphics imagery
were
compellingly evocative of the structures found in nature. And was not the entire physical universe the product of physical “processors” operating analogously upon steadily varying gradients of electric and magnetic fields, chemical concentrations, pressures, temperatures, velocities, and densities, from the molecular fields that guide the differentiation of growing embryos to the ridges and chasms of space-time that mold galaxies? That was when she had experienced her first true excitement at the world of physical sciences, from which had grown the compulsion to comprehend more of its workings that she had known ever since.

She was reminded of those natural hairspring mechanisms now, as she sat staring at a display screen in a computer-graphics lab in the Government Center at Turgenev. One of the things the
Valentina Tereshkova
experiment was revealing already was that there was still much to be learned about maintaining complex closed ecologies. With Olga’s help, Paula had ended up working in a section of the Environmental Department, creating computer models of plant and microorganism interaction cycles. The hope was eventually to integrate such models into a comprehensive simulation of the colony’s entire biology—although that goal could easily be still many years away. She traveled with an escorted party of others to Turgenev every day through a five-day week, and back to Zamork in the evening. She spent most of her time there in the graphics lab of the central computer facility. The lab was located in a less restricted part of the same general computing complex in which Magician had met his downfall.

On the screen, an intricate, constantly changing network of colored symbols interconnected by flow lines and feedback loops modeled dynamically the collective metabolism of one of the closed aquatic ecosystems being tested in the biolab area at Landausk. Currently the ecology inside
Valentina Tereshkova
was sustained by using industrial engineering processes to produce atmospheric gases, recycle water, and remove wastes. The longer-term intention was to develop a self-regulating biological system to perform these functions—an Earth-type ecology in miniature. But the subtleties and complexities of the interactions involved, even in a small, isolated aquatic system simpler than any farmyard pond, were endless and fascinating. She had thought for a long time at the back of her mind about quitting the Air Force and defense work for a field to which she could devote herself with total absorption. But for some reason she had always put it off for just one more year. . . .

The door of the room opened and Olga came in. She had tied her orange hair high and was carrying some books and a sheaf of papers, which she set down on the desk behind Paula’s chair. “Still busy, I see,” she said. “I talked to Stefan and got the things you said you wanted to read. Here they are.”

Paula turned her chair away from the screen. “Thanks.”

“How are things going?”

“Oh . . . more complicated than we expected, but interesting. How much longer before the Zamork bus leaves?”

“About an hour. Why? Do you want to take the later one again? I’m sure it can be arranged.”

“Yes.”

Olga smiled. “A prisoner applying for overtime. Whoever heard of anything like it?”

“I feel like a person again.”

“I was only teasing. I understand.” She nodded at the screen. “Are you on the track of what went wrong in test tank three?”

“I think so. The green algae blooms support the fish as food and produce oxygen. Also, they detoxify some of the harmful gases, such as ammonia. The problem with the way it’s set up is that the system won’t produce a dense algae population, no matter what you do. So it pollutes itself through oxygen starvation.”

“Any idea why?”

“The macrophytic plants that they put in as purifiers upstream to oxygenate the shell-bacterial filters also produce an antibiotic that interferes with the reproduction cycle of the algae,” Paula said. “But it would be difficult to eliminate them, since they supply feed for the White Chinese Amur fish. So we need some way to break down the antibiotic. Bigheaded carp cause blue-green algae to predominate, whereas Silver Chinese carp, which are phytoplankton eaters, produce a shift toward diatom algae.” She sighed. “The whole ecology changes completely with even a slight shift in fish-species composition. In other words, the way they’re trying to do it doesn’t have enough resilience against change. It’s too sensitive. It needs more negative feedback.”

Olga looked impressed. “Did you work all this out?”

“No I picked it up from the biologists. I’m just helping out with the software.”

Olga moved round the desk and sat down in the chair on the far side. “This kid of thing really interests you, doesn’t it,” she said.

“Biology?”

“Not that, so much. I know you’re a physicist.”

Paula leaned her chair back and stretched out a leg to rest her foot on the edge of the console. “Evolution interests me—not in the biological sense especially, but the way order and complexity emerge out of chaos, generally.”

“That’s what I mean: the underlying processes common to all of science.” Olga seemed to be trying to say that science, the common search for truth, was something that united people of all races and nationalities. They adhered to the same standards of ethics and intellectual honesty, and spoke the same language. Deception—especially self-deception—was the only enemy, and it was the enemy of all of them.

Paula looked across the desk and met the Russian woman’s questioning look. “Yes, exactly,” she said. In other words, they were both on the same side of something that had nothing to do with flags or frontiers. She looked around the room and up at the ceiling, shrugged, and sighed. Olga nodded her head, acknowledging that there was nothing more they could safely say just there and then. But Paula sensed that Olga had accomplished what she’d come in for.

The met again later that evening back at Zamork, on the gray beach fringing the reservoir. The strip-suns overhead were fading in simulated dusk, and other figures were out, making the best of the brief evening that would persist until the perimeter lights were switched on. A cool breeze was coming across the water. Olga turned up the collar of the coat she was wearing over her tunic, and they began walking slowly along the water’s edge toward where the beach ended at the hull wall.

“Would it come as any great surprise to you to learn that I might have had my own reasons for agreeing to help you that day back in the infirmary?” Olga asked.

At the time, Paula had been too overwrought with her own circumstances, and later too relieved to know she would be escaping from them, to think about it. But since settling in to her new status, she had wondered. “No, it wouldn’t,” she answered honestly.

“I have no interest in political ideologies,” Olga went on. “They are nothing but medieval religion and superstition, hiding behind different slogans. Their purpose is the same: to control the minds of people through dogmatism and manipulation. Neither system respects truth, freedom, or any form of independent thinking, or tolerates opposing opinions. The inquisitors of Galileo were no more interested in the way the Earth moves than American creationists care about the true origins of life on this planet. The real issue in both cases is that of traditional, unquestioned authority being challenged.”

“But with science it’s different,” Paula completed. “Okay, we see eye to eye on all that. So, where is this leading?”

“Along with others, I came to the conclusion that the ethic and rationality of the scientific approach to understanding reality could help form the basis of a saner world,” Olga replied. “But Neanderthal political systems stood in the way—particularly the ones like ours that suppress free expression, which is essential if anything better is to evolve. So I became politically active as a dissident, and upset a lot of people in the process. To cut a long story short, I ended up losing my academic titles, being arrested, and eventually getting shipped up here.”

Paula nodded. “So?”

“The dissidents that I worked with are still active back there,” Olga said. “Most of them are the kind of people that we have talked about—
our
kind of people: scientists, intellectuals, and thinkers who believe in the possibility of a safer, more civilized world based on reason and honesty.” They had neared the point where the wall of the outer hull rose sheer at the water’s edge. Behind them, the ground above the beach rose steeply to become the hill forming the valley side, lined with the huts of the special VIP’s. They stopped, and Olga turned to face Paula directly. “Many others were arrested over the years. We could never find out what had happened to them. But when I came to Zamork, I found many of them up here, alive and well.”