The Meddlers (14 page)

George leaned back and stared consideringly at the questioner. He had been right in his snap judgment—indeed an intelligent, educated individual.

“I’d like to discuss that first point, if I may, Dr. Briant,” Gerrard cut in. “Because although I don’t entirely share with you your view of the essential rottenness of all humanity as it exists today, I can see there are sections of it that are dangerous—”

“I have not suggested for a moment that I regard all humanity as rotten,” George said icily. “That is a most unjust and… and… absurd generalization.” He had nearly said stupid and stopped himself in time. No need, in so public a setting, to show his true opinion of the man’s shallowness. He had already diminished the man in his audience’s eyes by refusing to accept his interruptions. No need for more.

“All right, but to return to the point. I can see how your good tool, as you call it, could be used. I will accept that you are designing it to enable humanity to select and rear a future generation that is peaceful and creative rather than aggressive and destructive, that your personal motives are good. But can’t you see that there is
an obverse to everything? That just as you are making it possible to select conceptions that will result in the right sort of people, as you define them, and reject the potentially bad ones, so it would be possible to reject the good and retain the bad. I can see a situation in which a government made up of aggressive men, their minds set on world domination achieved through war, could seize on your researches to create the most warlike and dangerous nation that has ever existed, which links with this gentleman’s second point.” He whirled and pointed at the man in the front row. “In you, sir, we hear the voice of cool reason, of the natural fears of good men.”

He turned back to George. “We are afraid you are taking upon yourself the creation of a tool that has an even greater potential for evil than for good. And we have a right to ask you, as the creator of the tool, not only whether the way you are forging it is acceptable to the dignity of man, but whether the results can be safely presented to the world.”

“And there’s something else too!” Now several people in the audience were on their feet and waving in an attempt to attract the attention of Gerrard, who left the dais and walked up the narrow central aisle, holding a hand microphone high in the air. It was a man wearing an overcoat pulled high around his neck who succeeded in getting the chance to speak as Gerrard thrust the microphone at him.

“Something else too!” the man repeated. “All this talk about bodies and minds—what about man’s soul, sir! His soul! We are more than mere animals, remember! God created us for His own purposes, gave us free will to decide between good and evil, but retained unto Himself the ultimate decisions about the creation of life. To do as you are doing, to take to yourself the right to decide who shall and who shall not be born, is to set yourself up above God—”

“And God shall not be mocked!” A woman sitting beside him leapt to her feet and seized the microphone from Gerrard’s hand. “You’re evil, you scientists, evil, that’s what you are! Mocking God, stealing babies from their mothers. You’re a Herod, a wicked, evil—”

“Thank you. And someone else now.” Skillfully, Gerrard ma-
neuvered the microphone away from her and moved quickly up the aisle to the back of the audience; and the camera, pushed by a sweating man in a stained white shirt, followed him. “You, the lady at the end there. You look very anxious to say something.”

“I am, oh, I am! I’ve got a baby. He’s three months old and I love him and I wouldn’t do a thing to harm him. And it’s wicked, wicked what you’re doing to this poor little baby you’ve got locked up in your laboratoryl I’m not all that religious, I reckon you can be good without goin’ to Church, and that, but I know wickedness when I see it, and it ought to be put a stop to.”

“And who’s going to put a stop to it? That’s what I want to know!” A man behind the young mother reached for the microphone, but this time Gerrard held on firmly. “You’ve got an MP up there. What does he say is to be done about it? Eh? If we all want it put a stop to, will the government do something about it, or will it be like you said, Mr. Gerrard? Will they see they can use this… this
science
for their own political ideas? Eh? What do you say to that?”

By now, other men with microphones were moving among the audience, and so many people were shouting to be heard that George could no longer identify individual speakers as words overleaped one another and blended together into a great cry of confused and frightened protest.

“… and the next thing, you’ll be choosing only the types you want, and breeding out the minority groups you and your like have always hated. You’ll carry on where Hitler left off, if they let you, getting rid of Jews and Gypsies and colored people and…”

“… what about the people who won’t do what you scientists tell them and get pregnant anyway. Will the next thing be abortions for people who don’t want them, and forced sterilization for them afterwards, and…”

“… you and all your fancy long words. It’s a bloody con, that’s what it is. You’re trying to blind us with all your scientific talk, so that we don’t see what you’re getting at, and leave you alone till it’s too late…”

“… you’re a wicked, evil man, like that other woman said, flying in the face of Nature and God…”

“… and what about Einstein? They said he was mentally deficient, and if people like you get your way, they’ll kill off children like he was, and then…”

“… you’re trying to make science into the new religion, that’s what you’re doing, and it’s a …”

“… and who’s paying for your filthy experiments? That’s what I’d like to know. It’s coming out of our taxes, that’s where, and we ought to put a stop to it. It’s our money, that’s what you lot ought to remember, and we ought to have a say in…”

“… all your rubbishing talk about the future of mankind—it’s a load of crap—like this nonsense about the population explosion. There’s plenty of food for the world however many people there are in it, because no one’s started farming the seas yet, have they? That’s what you scientists ought to be doing, improving food production, and finding ways to colonize the planets and the moon, instead of messing about with people and the children they have. Mankind is a dominant species because it’s adaptable, and you’re trying to stop the natural methods of evolution for your own rotten reasons and…”

Above the uproar, Gerrard signaled furiously at the men with the microphones, and they fell back to the sides of the studio, pulling the microphones away from eagerly reaching hands, and Gerrard began to walk backward toward the dais, looking from side to side as he went.

“All right, all right!” he shouted, and the audience began gradually to quieten. “All right! We’re not getting anywhere like this. Let’s get a majority opinion on this. Let’s have a show of hands. How many people think this project ought to be stopped right now before it goes any further?”

Immediately a sea of hands shot up, waving, and Gerrard nodded and cried, “And let’s get the other side. Anyone think it’s a good thing?”

And this time other hands went up, and Gerrard craned to see.

“So it’s not unanimous! Right. Let’s hear the other side. You, sir, what reason do you have for seeing this project as worth following through?”

A young man wearing a brightly colored college scarf pushed his
way to the end of the row to get within reach of the microphone.

“Look, this opposition is to be expected.” He spoke in a surprisingly deep voice. “People are always scared of what they don’t understand, but you can’t stop progress, can you? We’d still be living in caves like the half-apes we sprang from if the frightened little people had their way. Dr. Briant is right. He can give us a wonderful tool, a wonderful one. We, the people who’ll have the next generation of children, we want a better world than the one we’ve got from all of you! None of this will affect you, anyway. It’s
us
who’ll have the next lot of babies, not you. You’ve had your chance and made a rotten mess of it. And you can’t stop science from helping us to make a better job of things. People with education won’t misuse what Dr. Briant discovers. And we’re the best-educated generation ever—”

“You kids think you know it all,” a woman shouted from the front of the now thoroughly stirred-up audience. “Wait until they try to take your babies off you, then you’ll change your tune, you—”

“Now, madam, let’s give both sides a fair hearing,” Gerrard called. “Anyone else with this young man?”

“Yes! He’s right! All this stupid talk about God and men’s souls—what we need is real education, not the prejudices of superstitious religion mongers like that man up the front,” a voice called. And then, quite suddenly, there was uproar again, with the audience almost entirely on its feet and shouting and milling about, completely out of Gerrard’s control.

Above his head, George saw the monitor black out, and then a few words faded in. “Normal service will be resumed.” And he looked away at the crowd so near to him and felt a stab of real fear. These people were dangerous in their fury, and for a brief moment he knew the terror of the threat of physical attack, and he looked over his shoulder for an escape route.

But already the noise was diminishing, the violence of the anger subsiding as rapidly as it had built up, and he looked back at the audience to see people taking their places again, Gerrard and the earphoned men in shirtsleeves moving quickly and purposefully among them, urging them into seats.

Gerrard came back to the dais and held his hands up for silence, and though there was still a good deal of noise he made himself heard above it.

“Now, come on, come on. Where’s your sense, all of you? This program is being seen all over the world! Do you want the rest of the world to say the British are so aggressive that they
need
the sort of controls we’ve been talking about? Come on now, cool it, cool it.”

“Nothing like a little chauvinism, is there?” George turned and looked in surprise at the source of the murmured comment; and he saw Michael Bridges close beside him, surprised because he’d forgotten he was there.

“If ever there were an indictment of uncontrolled human responses, here it is,” George said bitterly. “I can’t imagine even the most rabid antiscience types not seeing that—”

“Can’t you?” Bridges grinned and then laughed equally bitterly. “For a brilliant man, you can be very naïve, Dr. Briant. Don’t make the fatal mistake of assuming other people think as logically as you do, or even hear what’s said to them. No matter how often you tell ’em you haven’t got this infant in a laboratory cage, for example, they’ll still believe that’s where he is, with a chain round his neck very likely. You’ve frightened them sick—”

“All right, Julian, back on camera four,” Gerrard was shouting, and then the monitor lit up again, and Gerrard said smoothly, “Well, sorry for that momentary interruption, ladies and gentlemen. Due to factors beyond our control, and all that! Now, let’s see where we were. Dr. Briant has told us how his project is operating, and what he expects to discover from it. Mr. Gurney has voiced the fears of many in his questions on the way Dr. Briant’s discoveries may be used. Mr. Bridges has asked a couple of pertinent scientific questions—but let’s hear more from him before, perhaps, returning to the audience here in the studio for some more of their opinion.”

Mike leaned forward obediently. “My function, Mr. Gerrard, is to report facts as I find them. I believe—as my paper, the Echo, believes—that the greatest danger to mankind is not science and its discoveries, but ignorance. For this reason we support Dr. Briant in his efforts to combat ignorance, by reporting every piece of infor-
mation about his work that we can. I’m not sure newspapers should do more than this—inform and then reflect public opinion. Whether we ought to set ourselves up as molders of it is another question.”

He stopped, seeming to collect himself. Careful, careful, he was thinking. Don’t go on too long about the paper, or you’ll put your foot right in it with Sefton, one way or another. Speak for yourself now.

He looked at the audience and bit his lip. “Look,” he said, a little awkwardly. “I’m like the rest of you. I don’t know where the work of people like Dr. Briant is leading us. Maybe it’ll be a better world we’ll have, maybe not. But I have enough scientific training myself to know what a hell of a dilemma he’s in. Science has got to go on looking for knowledge. That’s what it’s all about. It’s above—no, not above—
beyond
politics, beyond such things as ideas about religion, and the uses to which its discoveries are put. If scientists had to think always about what might happen politically or socially because of their work, they’d never get the work done. There wouldn’t be any ethical problems to worry about, because as that young man in the audience said, we’d still be living in caves or the trees.

“I tell you flatly, the sort of scientists you should be frightened of aren’t the ones like Dr. Briant, who… well, opt out of the ethical questions. The really dangerous scientists are those who do have political and moral ideas and set out to use their science to further their own ideological ends. Can’t you see that? Dr. Briant is doing the right thing—doing his own job to the best of his ability and leaving the rest of it to the people he’s doing it for—you.”

He stopped, and there was a pause, and then someone started to clap at the back of the studio, and George, who had been sitting with his chin on his chest, impassively listening, looked up.

The solitary applauder was the young man in the scarf, but even as George looked at him, another man joined in, then a woman, and gradually the sound built up until several hands were clapping, but not loudly enough to drown the boos and shouts other members of the audience were producing.

Gerrard raised his hands again, and this time his control over
them was so complete that the applause stopped and there was silence.

“A very reasonable argument, Mr. Bridges, very reasonable. It makes some sense to me, and clearly to some of the audience here tonight. But not enough sense. You say—and so does Dr. Briant—that the ‘
safe
’ scientists are the ones who don’t concern themselves with ideological issues. Are you sure? Look, who should be the leaders, the individuals who make the decisions that affect the lives of ordinary people? Shouldn’t it be the thinkers, the creators of ideas? Shouldn’t it be the people who have as their driving force the desire to reveal truths about human life? Of course it should. But they won’t. They discover things that because they have a power for good have an equal power for bad—one can’t exist without the other—and then say, ‘Here it is, do what you like with it. It’s none of our business. We’re too busy looking for more truths.’ And what happens? Their dangerous truths are left in the hands of politicians, some of them people who are driven by little things, like the desire for personal power, and who don’t understand the explosive possibilities of what they have been given; or if they understand, don’t care. The scientists and philosophers—and I think it’s significant that scientific study used to be called natural philosophy—they think in a big way, about yesterday and tomorrow, about the whole great sweep of mankind in the world. But politicians don’t. By definition, they are concerned only with the here and now. They don’t think in any sort of … of historical context. That’s why I worry about Dr. Briant and his work.”