Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [136]
“You might think that,” Damon said, “and so might I—but we’ve moved in rather different social circles during the last twenty years, and I can assure you that there are plenty of people out there who are willing to kill, even at the risk of being killed. There are plenty of people who value real freedom over comfort and safety—people who would never be content to live in a world they have no power to change.”
“There are other worlds,” Rachel Trehaine said mildly. “Now that we’ve saved Earth, the new frontiers in space are opening up again. The arks launched before the Crash are still en route—and if Eveline Hywood and her panspermist friends are right, the galaxy must be full of worlds that have ecospheres of their own, including many that are ripe for colonization.”
“That’s the optimistic view,” Damon agreed. “As far as we know for sure, though, there isn’t an acre of worthwhile real estate anywhere in the universe outside of Earth. As far as we know for sure, this world is the world. No matter how many people decide to live in glorified tin cans like the domes of Mars and Lagrange-Five, Earth might be the only inheritance that has any real market value—the only thing worth fighting for.”
“Perhaps your years as a streetfighter have given you an unduly jaundiced view of your fellow men, Mr. Hart,” said the data analyst. “Perhaps you haven’t yet become sufficiently adult to realize how utterly juvenile such boys’ games are.”
“I realize that you don’t much like playing games, Dr. Trehaine,” Damon countered, “but you must have noticed that not everyone shares your distaste.”
“What, exactly, do you want from me?” she asked.
“An opinion. An honest opinion, if you’re willing to provide it, regarding Frederick Gantz Saul’s argument that no one should fight the world’s present owners for control of the world.”
“What is his argument?” she countered, although Damon had already judged—on the basis of their eye-to-eye contact—that she knew perfectly well what Saul was offering the independent thinkers who hadn’t yet fallen in line with his plans for the remaking of the world.
“He says that the nanotech revolution has only just begun, and that it can’t be carried forward to its proper conclusion by the forces of commercial competition. He says that the future of the world now needs to be planned, and that too many cooks would undoubtedly spoil the broth. He reckons that the world has always underestimated the true potential of gantzing biotech because of its historical association with the business of building elementary shelters for the poorest people in the world. Cementing mud, sand, and all kinds of other unpromising materials into solid structures may seem crude and vulgar to us, but in Saul’s estimation it’s the foundation stone of a true bridge between the organic and the inorganic.
“We already have biotech which will transform animal egg cells into huge tissue cultures of almost any design the genetweakers can dream up, and modify viable organisms in thousands of interesting and useful ways. If research like yours eventually bears fruit, we’ll be able to modify human beings in exactly the same way, engineering ova in artificial wombs so that they won’t need elaborate IT to provide all the extra features—like emortality—that we consider necessary and desirable. According to Saul, that revolution will be completed by gantzing biotech/nanotech hybrids, which will enable us to work miracles of transformation with any and all inorganic structures.
“Saul calls himself a true Gaian—not a Gaian Mystic, but someone with a real understanding of the implications of the Gaia hypothesis. The whole point of that hypothesis, according to Saul, is that it’s wrong to think of the inorganic environment as something given, as a framework within which life has to operate. Just as Earth’s atmosphere is a product of life, he says, so are its oceans and its rocks: everything at the surface is part of the same system—and when we take control of that system, as we very soon