In the instant after launching, the lightship made an eerie trail across the sky. Cylindrical streaks of pseudo-Cerenkov radiation lingered long after the black globe had disappeared, bolting faster and faster toward its rendezvous with hyperspace.
The director turned to the emissary from Earth.
"It is gone. Now we wait. One Earth-style month. "I will state, one more time, that I did not approve willingly of the inclusion of the organic form aboard the ship. I object to the inelegant modifications required in order to suit the ship to… to biological functions. Also, old style humans are three times as often subject to irrational impulses than more modem forms. This one may take it into its head to try to change the ship's controls when the fatal stress begins."
Unlike the director, the visiting councilor wore a humaniform body, with legs, arms, torso and head. He expressed his opinion with a shrug of his subtly articulated shoulders.
"You exaggerate the danger, Director. Don't you think I know that the controls Jason Forbs sees in front of him are only dummies?"
The director swiveled quickly to stare at the councilor. How-?
He made himself calm down. It-doesn't-matter. So what if he knew that fact? Even the sole Ethicalist member of the Solar System Council could not make much propaganda of it. It was only a logical precaution to take, under the circumstances.
"The designated oral witness engineer should spend his living moments performing his function," the director said coolly. "Recording his subjective impressions as long as he is able. It is the role you commanded we open up for an old style human, using your peremptory authority as a member of the council."
The other's humaniform face flexed in a traditional, pseudoorganic smile, archaic in its mimicry of the Old Race. And yet the director, schooled in Utilitarian belief, felt uneasy under the councilor's gaze.
"I had a peremptory commandment left to use up before the elections," the councilor said smoothly in old-fashioned, modulated tones. "I judged that this would be an appropriate way to use it."
He did not explain further. The director quashed an urge to push the question. What was the Ethicalist up to? Why waste a peremptory command on such a minor, futile thing as this? How could he gain anything by sending an old style human out to his certain death!
Was it to be some sort of gesture? Something aimed at getting out the biological vote for the upcoming elections?
If so, it was doomed to failure. In-depth psychological studies had indicated that the level of resignation and apathy among organic citizens was too high to ever be overcome by anything so simple.
Perhaps, though, it might be enough to save the seat of the one Ethicalist on the council…
The director felt warm. He knew that it was partly subjective-resentment of this invasion of his domain by a ridiculous sentimentalist. Most of all, the director resented the feelings he felt boiling within himself.
Why, why do we modern forms have to be cursed with this burden of emotionalism and uncertainty! I hate it!
Of course he knew the reasons. Back in ancient times, fictional "robots" had been depicted as caricatures of jerky motion and rigid, formal thinking. The writers of those precryo days had not realized that complexity commanded flexibility… even fallibility. The laws of physics were adamant on this. Uncertainty accompanied subtlety. An advanced mind had to have the ability to question itself, or creativity was lost.
The director loathed the fact, but he understood it.
Still, he suspected that the biologists had played a trick on his kind, long ago. He and other Utilitarians had an idea that there had been some deep programming, below anything nowadays accessed, to make mechano-people as much like the old style as possible.
If I ever had proof it was true… he thought, gloweringly, threateningly.
Ah, but it doesn't matter. The biologicals will be extinct in a few generations, anyway. They're dying of a sense of their own uselessness.
Good riddance!
"I will leave you now, Councilor. Unless you wish to accompany me to recharge on refrigerants?"
The Ethicalist bowed slightly, ironically, aware, of course, that the director could not return the gesture. "No, thank you, Director. I shall wait here and contemplate for a while.
"Before you go, however, please let me make one thing clear. It may seem, at times, as if I am not sympathetic with your work here. But that is not true. After all, we're all humans, all citizens. Everybody wants Project Lightprobe to succeed. The dream is one we inherit from our makers… to go out and live among the stars.
"I am only acting to help bring that about-for all of our people."
The director felt unaccountably warmer. He could not think of an answer. "I require helium," he said, curtly, and swiveled to leave. "Good bye, Councilor."
The director felt as if eyes were watching his armored back as he sped down the hallway.
Damn the biologicals and their allies! he cursed within. Damn them for making us so insidiously like them… emotional, fallible and, worst of all, uncertain!
Wishing the last of the old style were already dust on their dirty, wet little planet, the director hurried away to find himself a long, cold drink.