The City And The Stars - Arthur C. Clarke [18]
‘Even if it is unusual for anyone to come here,’ said Alvin, still fencing verbally, ‘why should you be interested?’
‘Because in Diaspar,’ replied Khedron, ‘the unusual is my prerogative. I had marked you down a long time ago; I knew we should meet some day. After my fashion, I too am unique. Oh, not in the way that you are: this is not my first life. I have walked a thousand times out of the Hall of Creation. But somewhere back at the beginning I was chosen to be Jester, and there is only one Jester at a time in Diaspar. Most people think that is one too many.’
There was an irony about Khedron’s speech that left Alvin still floundering. It was not the best of manners to ask direct personal questions, but after all Khedron had raised the subject.
‘I’m sorry about my ignorance,’ said Alvin. ‘But what is a Jester, and what does he do?’
‘You ask “what”,’ replied Khedron, ‘so I’ll start by telling you “why”. It’s a long story, but I think you will be interested.’
‘I am interested in everything,’ said Alvin, truthfully enough.
‘Very well. The men—if they were men, which I sometimes doubt—who designed Diaspar had to solve an incredibly complex problem. Diaspar is not merely a machine, you know—it is a living organism, and an immortal one. We are so accustomed to our society that we can’t appreciate how strange it would have seemed to our first ancestors. Here we have a tiny, closed world which never changes except in its minor details, and yet which is perfectly stable, age after age. It has probably lasted longer than the rest of human history—yet in that history there were, so it is believed, countless thousands of separate cultures and civilisations which endured for a little while and then perished. How did Diaspar achieve its extraordinary stability?’
Alvin was surprised that anyone should ask so elementary a question, and his hopes of learning something new began to wane.
‘Through the Memory Banks, of course,’ he replied. ‘Diaspar is always composed of the same people, though their actual groupings change as their bodies are created or destroyed.’
Khedron shook his head.
‘That is only a very small part of the answer. With exactly the same people, you could build many different patterns of society. I can’t prove it, and I’ve no direct evidence of it, but I believe it’s true. The designers of the city did not merely fix its population; they fixed the laws governing its behaviour. We’re scarcely aware that those laws exist, but we obey them. Diaspar is a frozen culture, which cannot change outside of narrow limits. The Memory Banks store many other things outside the patterns of our bodies and personalities. They store the image of the city itself, holding its every atom rigid against all the changes that Time can bring. Look at this pavement—it was laid down millions of years ago, and countless feet have walked upon it. Can you see any sign of wear? Unprotected matter, however adamant, would have been ground to dust ages ago. But as long as there is power to operate the Memory Banks, and as long as the matrices they contain can still control the patterns of the city, the physical structure of Diaspar will never change.’
‘But there have been some changes,’ protested Alvin. ‘Many buildings have been torn down since the city was built, and new ones erected.’
‘Of course—but only by discharging the information stored in the Memory Banks and then setting up new patterns. In any case, I was merely mentioning that as an example of the way the city preserves itself physically. The point I want to make is that in the same way there are machines in Diaspar that preserve our social structure. They watch for any changes and correct them before they become too great. How do they do it? I don’t know—perhaps by selecting those who emerge from the Hall of Creation. Perhaps by tampering with our personality patterns; we may think we have free-will, but can we be certain of that?