Destination: Void

Well, at least we've got him arguing, Timberlake thought. He smiled at Prudence, but she was watching Bickel. Timberlake returned his attention to Flattery. How dull... almost dead the man looks.

"Think of an electronic tube," Bickel said. "A very tiny amount of energy applied at the critical bias junction produces a tremendous change in output. Consciousness does something on the same order, Tim. We have a neural amplifier."

"Instant causality," Flattery whispered.

Lord! How that hand ached - as though it had been held above the trigger key for a century.

"That's what we have to toss out of our thinking," Bickel said. "Instant causality says if we have complete knowledge of a natural law and complete knowledge of the given system at a given time, then we can predict exactly what the system will do from that point on. That sure as hell isn't true at the atomic level and it doesn't apply to consciousness. Consciousness is like a system of lenses that select and amplify, that enlarge objects out of the surround. It can delve deep into the microcosm or into the macrocosm. It reduces the gigantic to the manageable, or enlarges the invisible to the visible."

This doesn't change anything, Flattery thought. Why are we talking? Is he just trying to gain a little time? The pressures of the terrible necessity which had been built into him were becoming almost unbearable.

Bickel saw the faint stirrings of life in Flattery's eyes. "But this consciousness factor isn't a completely random thing. In a universe packed with random possibility of destruction, random activity equals the certainty of encountering that destruction - and we're assuming consciousness is survival-oriented:"

"Unless it's a healing process," Flattery said.

"But the healing process would have to completely counteract any destruction," Bickel said. And he saw the light of vitality grow in Flattery's eyes, his ma

"I have to push this key, John," Flattery said. "Do you know that?"

"In a moment," Bickel said.

"Raj, you can't," Prudence said. "Think of all those helpless lives down in the hyb tanks. Think of -"

"Think of all those helpless lives back on Earth," Flattery said. "What would we turn loose on them? John's black box - white box transfer put his life - his entire ancestry - into the computer. Don't you see that? Any of you?"

Prudence put a hand to her mouth.

Bickel saw the alertness in Flattery, the vital consciousness expressed in every movement, realized that death-conditioning tensions had pushed him over the threshold into something near full potential. But the new argument Flattery had produced staggered Bickel.

If we restore it... awaken it... I'd be its unconscious, Bickel thought. I'd be its emotional monitor, its id, its ego and its ancestors. He swallowed. And Raj...

"Raj, don't push that key," Bickel said.

"I must," Flattery said. And as he spoke he sensed the poignancy of their awareness - this new vitality.

"You don't understand," Bickel said. "That field generator in your cubby - you think there was no feedback from you into the system, but there was. Your voice, your prayers - every gross or subtle reaction went back into the system through its sensors. Whatever religion is to you, that's what it'd be to the Ox. Whatever -"

"Whatever religion was to me," Flattery said.

And he pushed the key. It clicked, locked.

"How long do we have, Raj?" Timberlake asked.

"Perhaps a few minutes," Flattery said.

"And perhaps more," Bickel said.

"Don't you think we should've tried to limp back to UMB?" Prudence asked. "Awake as we are now, the ship-control necessities would've been so much simpler."

"Some fool would be certain to play with this ship - just testing," Flattery said. "And we..." He gestured to include all four of them. "This potential we've discovered without ourselves would've been engulfed on Earth, smothered, killed." He shrugged. "What are a few minutes or a few years, more or less? I had a responsibility... and fulfilled it."

"You had a death wish, too," Bickel said.

"That, too," Flattery agreed, recognizing how the deadly impulse had helped project him into his full awareness.

With that realization, Flattery began to glimpse the train of Bickel's cryptic words - their other meaning.

"There were Greeks who said that even the gods must die," Bickel said.

Flattery turned, looked at the big board. It was fully alight now, not a warning telltale showing, every gauge zeroed normal.

"It's programmed to take us to Tau Ceti," Bickel said.

Flattery began to laugh, almost hysterically. Presently, he stopped. "But there's no inhabitable planet at Tau Ceti. You know what all this is, John...et piece. We know what we are - cell-culture humans! A host gave a bit of himself containing the template of the total and the axolotl tanks took care of the rest. We were expendables!" He sighed, put down the urge to sink back into the deadly torpor. They're already growing our replacements, our duplicates, building another Tin Egg...back at UMB. Each failure teaches them something back at UMB. They've had a continuous monitor on the computer. When I depressed that key, that also launched a capsule back toward Earth - the complete report."

"Not quite complete," Bickel said.

"The ship is going to take us to Tau Ceti," Timberlake said.

"But the self-destruction program," Prudence said. And as she spoke, she saw what the others already had seen. The ship held control of its own death. It could die. And this was what had given it life. The impulse welled up into the AAT from the Ox circuits... and was repressed, the way humans repressed it. The ship had come to life the way they had - in the midst of death. Death was the background against which life could know itself. Without death - an ending - they were confronted by the infinite design problem, an impossibility.

All Flattery had done was to provide the AAT - the seat of consciousness - with a superenergizer.

"Nothing at Tau Ceti, you're sure?" Bickel asked.

"Planets, but not inhabitable," Flattery said.

A green action light began to glow on the main console.

"No sense going into hyb," Bickel said.

"We are happy," Prudence said. She stared at the green light. "It isn't fully conscious yet - the ship."

"Of course not," Timberlake said, and he thought how deftly she had phrased their emotional state. I would've said we are filled with joy. But joy has somewhat religious overtones. Prue's way is better.

Prudence grew aware that Flattery was looking at her. "Why not?" he said.

Yes, why not? she agreed.

But no woman had ever presided at a stranger birth.

She crossed to the main console, switched the computer's audio pickup into the main input cha

"You," she said.

She kept her hand on the switch, the new sensitivity of her skin reporting the molecular shift of metal in direct contact.

They waited, knowing the outline of what was happening inside their robotic construction. That one word, internally powered by programmed curiosity and self-preservation directives, was winding its way through the as-yet semiconscious creation. Preservation - but there were many kinds of preservation, many things to preserve.

But there was only one receptor upon which "You" could impress itself.

Programs were firing, new cross-links being created, comparisons and balances being made.

Abruptly, the board in front of Prudence went dead. Every light extinguished, every gauge at dead rest. She waggled the computer switch, got no response. The entire ship began to tremble.

"Is that the self-destruction program?" Bickel asked.

A single word, metallic and harsh, boomed from the vocoder above them: "Negative."

The ship vibration eased, resumed, cut off sharply.