light and shade of it all.The squalor and the muck,
the cripples and the swollen bellies; the whole
poverty of it makes the beauty stand out a single
pretty girl in the crowds of Calcutta seems like an
impossibly fragile bloom, like a I mean you can't
believe that the filth and the poverty hasn't
somehow contaminated her it's like a miracle a
revelation.Then you realize that she'll only be like
that for a few years, that she'll only live a few
decades, then she'll wear and have six kids and
wither The feeling, the realization, the staggering'
his voice trailed off and he looked, slightly
helplessly, almost vulnerably, at me.It was just the
point at which to make my most telling, cutting
comment.But also just the point at which I could do
no such thing.
So I sat still, saying nothing, and Linter said, 'I
don't know how to explain it.It's alive.I'm alive.If I
did die tomorrow it would have been worth it just
for these last few months.I know I'm taking a risk
in staying, but that's the whole point.I know I might feel lonely and afraid.I expect that's going to
happen, now and again, but it'll be worth it.The
loneliness will make the rest worth it.We expect
everything to be set up just as we like it, but these
people don't; they're used to having good and bad
mixed in together.And that gives them an interest in
living, it makes them appreciate opportunities
these people know what tragedy is, Sma.They live
it.We're just an audience.'
He sat there, looking away from me, while I stared
at him.The big-city noise grumbled beyond us, and
the sunlight came and went in the room as shadows
of clouds passed over us and I thought; you poor
bastard, you poor schmuck, they've got you.
Here we are with our fabulous GCU, our supreme
machine; capable of outgeneraling their entire
civilization and taking in Proxima Centauri on a
day trip; packed with technology compared to
which their citybusters are squibs and their Grays
are less than calculators; a vessel casually sublime
in its impregnable power and inexhaustible
knowledge here we are with our ship and our
modules and platforms, satellites and scooters and
drones and bugs, sieving their planet for its most
precious art, its most sensitive secrets, its finest
thoughts and greatest achievements; plundering
their civilization more comprehensively than all
the invaders in their history put together, giving not
a damn for their puny armaments, paying a hundred
times more attention to their art and history and
philosophy than to their eclipsed science, glancing
at their religions and politics the way a doctor
would at symptoms and for all that, for all our
power and our superiority in scale, science,
technology, thought and behaviour, here was this
poor sucker, besotted with them when they didn't
even know he existed, spellbound with them,
adoring them; and powerless.An immoral victory
for the barbarians.
Not that I was in a much better position myself.I
may have wanted the exact opposite of Dervley
Linter, but I very much doubted I was going to get
my way, either.I didn't want to leave, I didn't want
to keep them safe from us and let them devour
themselves; I wanted maximum interference; I
wanted to hit the place with a programme Lev
Davidovitch would have been proud of.I wanted to
see the junta generals fill their pants when they
realized that the future is - in Earth terms - bright,
bright red.
Naturally the ship thought I was crazy too.Perhaps
it imagined Linter and I would cancel each other
out somehow, and we'd both be restored to sanity.
So Linter wanted nothing done to the place, and I
wanted everything done to it.The ship - along with
whatever other Minds were helping it decide what
to do - was probably going to come down closer to
Linter's position than mine, but that was the very
reason the man couldn't stay.He'd be a little
randomly-set time bomb ticking away in the middle
of the uncontaminated experiment that Earth was
probably going to become; a parcel of radical
contamination ready to Heisenberg the whole deal
at any moment.
There was nothing more I could do with Linter for
the moment.Let him think about what I'd
said.Perhaps just knowing it wasn't only the ship
that thought he was being foolish and selfish would
make some difference.
I got him to show me around Paris in the Rolls,
then we ate - magnificently - in Montmartre, and
ended up on the Left Bank, wandering the maze of
streets and sampling a profligate number of wines
and spirits.I had a room booked at the George, but
stayed with Linter that night, just because it seemed
the most natural thing to do - especially in that
drunken state - and anyway it had been a while
since I'd had somebody to hug during the night.
Next morning, before I set off for Berlin, we both