Macroscope

“But you can’t be sure which color the queen might see herself? I appreciate your caution more and more.”

Ivo appreciated the appreciation, after having kept his secret so long. His initial impression of Groton had been so negative — and so wrong. He had seen a fat white slob, when he should have seen his own prejudice. Now the man — not fat at all! — was his closest ally. In similar fashion he had come to appreciate the individual qualities of Beatryx, who demonstrated so plainly and in such contrast to Afra that there were other things besides intelligence and beauty. Afra—

Afra still slept or rested, her breathing even. “I guess it wasn’t as late as we thought. Maybe we should take turns watching, until something happens.”

“Good idea. I’ll snooze for a couple hours, then you can.” And Groton pushed off and floated in the air as though it were a mattress, utterly relaxed.

Ivo watched the laboratory. He felt a twinge of guilt for his snooping, but he was afraid to do otherwise. He did not want anything to happen to her. Brad’s trick had been obvious — in retrospect — but devastatingly effective. Afra had indeed captured Ivo’s imagination, and he felt a thrill every time he looked at her or thought about her. She was an impressive woman and she was from Georgia, whatever her faults might be. Call it foolishness, call it prejudice: he was committed for the duration.

Had Brad really been in love with her, or even, as he had put it, infatuated? Ivo doubted it now. He had allowed himself to forget how cynical Brad could be about human relations. Many of those raised in the project were like that. They tended to be strong on capability and weak on conscience, especially when dealing with the outside world, with Schön the logical extreme. They were independent, morally as well as intellectually and financially. To Brad the challenge had always been more important than the individual. Afra might simply have been the handiest entertainment available for off-hours at the station, intriguing as a classic WASP — and useful for special purposes, such as the tethering of Schön’s pawn. A Georgia girl for the Georgia historian.

If she should succeed in reviving Brad as the man she had known, that in itself might represent disaster. No doubt her current fever of activity had been brought about by guilt over her own prejudice. Brad was like Ivo: tainted. He had Negroid blood in his veins, melanin in his skin. If she lost him, she would convince herself that it was due to her rejection of his racial makeup.

Yet — bless her for that sensation of guilt! Was not that in essence conscience? Normal persons were held in bounds by limitations of pride and guilt; abnormal ones were defective in these qualities, and were thus dangerous to society. Even the subtle racism of the educated Southern white had its rules and restrictions; it was not inherently evil.

Schön, on the other hand, had neither intellectual nor ethical limitations. He had no guilt, no shame. He would be a terror.

Afra stirred. She stretched in a ma

In a few minutes she emerged and walked to the counter. Electronic equipment was set up above it, and he saw that she had adjusted her extension-screen to aim straight down from head-height. She contemplated the transparent vat for ninety seconds, then stooped to manhandle out the basin from a lower compartment.

No doubt now: it was about to begin.

“Harold.”

Groton woke, windmilling his arms for a moment before adjusting to the free-fall state. They watched.

Afra opened the valve and let the thick liquid flow into the basin. She stood back, watching it. Ivo tried to imagine her thoughts, and could not. It was Bradley Carpenter that swirled into the container: her beloved.

“I don’t see any instruments,” Groton said. “If it’s surgery she has in mind—”

True. There was no special equipment in evidence. But if she had given up on that, what did she plan? Certainly she did not intend to nurse him indefinitely.

The protoplasm, freed from confinement and placed in a suitable environment, seemed to respond. It rippled and sparkled. Afra flushed the glass container out with water and allowed the rinse to pour into the basin too. And — the beam came on.

Here they were, using the macroscope to spy on her — yet the alien signal was able to transmit itself through the system simultaneously. This was a property Ivo had not known it had.

Once more the eye formed, the jellyfish, the pumping tunicate, the evolving vertebrate.

“You know,” Groton said, “there’s such a simple answer — if it works. What would happen if the process could be stopped a moment early? Just a tiny fraction of a lifetime—”

“So the destroyer never happened?” It was simple… too simple. Why hadn’t the galactic manual recommended it?

“She could be ru

The form continued to develop, achieving the air-breathing stage.

“Or,” Groton conjectured, “she might experiment with changes in the mixture. If it were possible to isolate the damaged cells in the fluid state and substitute healthy protoplasm—”

“But it would be protoplasm with some other lineup of chromosomes!” Ivo said. “And where would she get it?” Neither man cared to conjecture.

Afra trotted out a machine with pronged electrodes. Ivo remembered fetching the specifications for it from the macroscope, but had no comprehension of its purpose. Evidently Afra had studied its application more carefully. He saw now that the basin she was employing was metal, not plastic; it would conduct electric current.

“A jolt just before the destroyer,” Groton said. “To freeze the process right there—”

“But the melting occurred after the destroyer,” Ivo said, still namelessly disturbed. “The way the process works, every experience is part of the plasma. You can’t take it away by timing — not without shaking up the entire system, and that’s dangerous. I wouldn’t—”

“We’re about to find out,” Groton said. “Watch.” Somehow the four hours of the reconstitution had elapsed already. Helplessly, Ivo watched. Afra placed one electrode upon the rim of the basin and fastened it there; she laid the other, a disk, upon the metamorphosing head. Timing it apparently by intuition, she touched the power switch.

There was current. Ivo saw the figure in the vat stiffen. “Shock therapy?” Groton murmured. “That makes no sense to me.”

Afra cut off the power and removed the disk. She stepped back.

The figure, now recognizably Brad, ceased its evolution. The eyelids wavered, the chest expanded.

“Can she have done it?” Groton said disbelievingly.

“She’s done something. But I’m still afraid that destroyer experience is in him somewhere, waiting to take effect; Maybe after he’s been around a few hours or days—” Or was it his jealous hopes speaking?

“Oh-oh.”

There was certainly trouble. The shape in the basin, instead of coming fully alert, was changing again. “It’s regressing!” Ivo cried. “She didn’t stop it, she reversed it!”

“Then it should melt, shouldn’t it?”

“It isn’t melting!”

Whatever was happening, it was no part of the cycle they had seen before. The beam remained on, and Afra watched, hand to her mouth, helpless. The change accelerated.

The head swelled grotesquely, the legs shrank. The body drew into itself. Hands and feet became shapeless, then withdrew into mere points. The figure began to resemble a giant starfish, complete with suckers upon the lower surfaces of the projections.