The three men looked up as Dr. Karth came in. If they were looking for any evidence of contrition, they were disappointed. Karth strode to his chair with his characteristic long confident strides and sat down without acknowledging the others. Dr. Margeth glanced down at a sheaf of notes he had been rustling through, then peered over his glasses at Karth.
"Dr. Karth," he began, "I assume you know why we've summoned you here."
Karth's mouth curled in a supercilious smirk. He stroked his long pointed goatee.
"Yes. You presume to judge me. You imagine yourselves a jury of my peers."
Dr. Goson glared at him. "You won't get anywhere with that attitude, Karth. This board is the legally constituted governing body of this expedition. All research projects must be approved and certified by this board or they will not be published in our reports at the end of the voyage. And more than that. You're in real danger of losing your license to practice. If we decide against you, your research is finished."
"Don't threaten me, Goson," said Karth with a dismissive wave. "What do I care about your license?"
Dr. Goson's face reddened. "You'll care when your funding is cut off. You'll care when you can't get your work published."
"I don't care a fig for you and your board of inquiry. I don't have to remind you that I have independent means more than sufficient to see my project through. As for publishing, I haven't devoted all these years to this work just to see it appear in one of your journals and have small-minded people like you bicker and snipe at it as if you could understand it."
"You arrogant fool. If your license is revoked, you'll be through. No reputable scientist will work with you, or even listen to your ideas."
Karth's already black face darkened with anger. "Do you think I need you? Any of you? I've always worked alone for the simple reason that I've never met anyone I felt was competent to collaborate with me. My staff of assistants follow my directions willingly. They are all I need. My work is unique - and so far beyond the rest of you poor plodders that you'll never have any concept of what I'm really trying to achieve."
Dr. Goson's eyes blazed. "Who gave you the right...?"
"That's enough, Doctor," said Dr. Lesso, the senior member of the board. "This is becoming altogether too personal. The purpose of this board is not to judge Dr. Karth's attitude or personality, but to evaluate his work."
"My work has always been above reproach. My procedures are impeccable, and you know it, Dr. Lesso."
"We're not talking about your procedures," said Dr. Margeth. "This board of inquiry was formed because many of your peers are deeply disturbed by the nature of your work. Dr. Lesso has been approached by nearly every one of the senior scientists at some point during the expedition. They are concerned by the implications of your project. It is a matter of ethics."
"Ethics! What do you mean, ethics? Can you even define the term?"
"Ethics means taking the possible consequences of your project into account," said Margeth with his usual pedantic air.
"Oh, thank you, Professor," said Karth with a sarcastic nod. "And whom am I harming? Can you name any individual, species, or race that is endangered by my work?"
"No one yet," said Goson, "but if you should succeed, what then?"
"If I succeed there will be a new form of life in this universe that never existed before. It will be the greatest scientific achievement of all time. My name will go down in history."
Margeth shook his head, expressing clearly his doubt that Karth would succeed. "But if you did, Karth? Have you given the slightest thought to the feelings of the creatures you would have made?"
"Feelings? Such creatures do not yet exist. What can any of us say what their feelings might be?"
"But all creatures have rights. It is a tenet long held sacred by our profession. Animal experimentation has been outlawed for centuries."
"But they are not animals. They are not anything that has ever existed before. Creatures is precisely what they will be. Created things - created by me."
"Nevertheless," Margeth went on. "The fact remains that such creatures, if you can make them, will be created with their rights innate, inherent in their being. They are not your playthings."
"You all talk as if his ravings are rational," Goson burst out. "Do you really think he can create an entirely new form of life?"
"You haven't visited Dr. Karth's lab recently, I take it?" said Lesso dryly.
"No," Goson admitted. "Dr. Karth doesn't welcome visitors."
"I don't suffer fools, you mean. The questions you ask! I don't have time to explain my work to those incapable of understanding."
"You bastard! What you are trying to do is impossible. Everyone knows that!"
"Stop it, all of you," said Lesso. "Suffice it to say, Dr. Goson, that Dr. Karth has made a great deal of progress recently. Since our last planetfall he has achieved results that I would have to call astounding. I for one believe that he is near to achieving his goal."
Goson sat back, obviously stunned that even the great Lesso thought Karth could succeed. Karth grinned at him with an insufferably smug look on his long dark face.
"Look here, Dr. Karth," began Margeth with an air of starting anew. "We're not criticizing you or your work. No one doubts your talents or your accomplishments. What you have achieved already is remarkable. If you published today your name would be made."
"But?"
"But if you do create a new form of life, they will no longer be merely chains of proteins in your laboratory. They will be independent beings, with all the inalienable rights that we are all born with. What will happen to them? Will you keep them in cages in your lab? Will you perform experiments on them, dissect them? These things are forbidden."
"Nonsense. They are forbidden for all the races that pre-exist, for those we know and for those we encounter on our travels. But these are mine. They are not independent beings. They are dependent on me. I will give them life, and they will remain my creation. I can do with them as I will."
"Dr. Karth! These views are unacceptable!" exclaimed Goson.
"I care nothing for what you find acceptable," spat Karth, his calm demeanor now swept away. "You have no concept of what I'm doing, or of what I'm still capable. None of you could do what I have done. My work is so far beyond yours that you have no right whatsoever to judge me. History will judge me, and your treatment of me will make you laughing stocks for generations of scientists to come."
"That's quite enough, Dr. Karth," said Margeth, his voice showing irritation for the first time. "I believe we've heard enough, haven't we, gentlemen? It's clear that the staff's concerns and suspicions are fully substantiated. This situation cannot continue."
"I agree wholeheartedly," said Goson fervently. They both looked at Lesso.
Lesso sighed and rubbed his face, smoothing his flowing white beard. "I greatly regret being forced to make this decision. We have never found ourselves in the position of forcing one of our own to discontinue a promising line of research."
"Then don't do it," said Karth. "It's not for myself that I ask, but for my staff. They're an excellent group. I hand-picked every one of them myself. Most have been with me for many years. This project has been their entire careers. I feel responsible for them."
"Your concern is admirable," said Goson with a barely-concealed sneer. "I wish your sense of responsibility extended to your research subjects as well."
"Very well, Dr. Goson," said Lesso placatingly. Then he turned to stare at Karth sitting across from him. He sat silent for long moments. Finally he sighed.
"You and I have worked together for a long time, Karth. I consider us friends."
"So do I. And I think everyone knows I consider you the finest scientist of us all. You were my mentor. Your work inspired me. Without your groundbreaking work I never could have achieved what I have."
"That's what makes it all so difficult for me now," said Lesso, shaking his head. "I trained you, showed you the path, and you went on beyond me. You were my finest student. You say you're proud of your achievement, and you have every reason to be. But in a way, as I look back over a career so long it amazes even me, I cannot but think that my finest achievement is you. I made the initial discoveries, developed the procedures, but my work was primitive. You've gone so far beyond, it's as if you're standing on my shoulders and you're touching something... I don't know, something wrong, something that shouldn't be touched."
"Something forbidden?" suggested Karth. "Come now, when aviation was being developed, there were those who wrung their hands, saying we're not meant to fly, whatever that means. The same thing happened with robotics and artificial intelligence, it happened with FTL space travel, it happened with genetic repair. We scientists chuckle at the fools. I never thought you'd become one of these weepy-eyed mystics."
"No," said Lesso with a quick shake of his white hair. "It's not like that. I don't fear the wrath of some supernatural being whose law we've broken. It's that we have to take into account the possible effects our work may have on everyone else, on all of us. We do not work in a vacuum, though it seems too many of us try to. You have developed the technology to the point where it is dangerous."
"But it was you that showed us the way. They are your techniques, taken it to their logical conclusion."
"I am well aware of that. I make no apologies for my early work. It taught us something we didn't know about the universe, something important. It also, incidentally, brought me fame and not a little improvement in my level of prestige and comfort. It's safe to say I am now chief scientist on this great expedition because of that early work."
"Then why try to crush it out now?"
"Because I think you're getting into areas where things could quickly get out of hand, with truly immense consequences. Yes, I made life, but there was no concern about it becoming a danger. Hell, in those days we were ecstatic to get a few thousand genes to twist in just the right way to be viable, even for a few days. We didn't have time to worry about what these organic molecules might evolve into. We were lucky to get a half dozen consecutive generations."
"Yes, and I've done the same thing, only with better equipment and fully developed procedures. We've learned a staggering amount in the years since your breakthrough. Now we're finally achieving what could only be glimpsed on the horizon from that day. Where you built a self-replicating chromosome, we can build an entire biota. Not just a virus to drop in a sea on a sterile planet, but a whole planktonic community with plants and animals to eat them and animals to eat them. It can be done."
"I believe you," Lesso nodded. "I'm not afraid you'll fail; I'm afraid you'll succeed. It is possible. If not now, then soon. It is clearly within our reach. I know we can do it, but should we? What if something goes wrong?"
"There is always a risk of that. But we can take precautions, monitor it closely, watch for unexpected development. If the undefined 'something bad' happens and we can't control it, we can always abort the experiment. We simply alter the parameters such that the viability quotient goes negative. Soon the planet is sterile again."
"We hope. We don't know how bad something bad might be."
"Well, at the worst we can pack up our equipment and try again somewhere else. It's not as if we screwed up the planet's environment. It had no biological activity at all before the experiment. It can't be any worse off. And there are billions more sterile planets out there. We can keep trying until we get it right."
"How would you know when you've 'gotten it right?'"
"When we have built an entire planetary ecosystem, completely self-sustaining. Every check and balance will be checked and balanced, every pull matched by a push. When we have shut down the last controls and it just keeps humming along on its own. When we know that, barring a major cosmic impact, this planet will have life growing and evolving on it forever. And it will be our creation. That, gentlemen, will be a day that will alter our society forever, literally change the course of civilization."
"You make it sound as if we will become gods," scoffed Margeth.
"We will have done something that only gods are supposed to be able to do."
"That touches on what I find so disturbing about the idea," said Lesso. We know we're not gods, but what of the creatures we create? If they evolve into sentient beings, might they not worship us as their creators?"
"What difference does it make whom they worship? We'll all be long dead. Our lives are relatively long, but not that long. We won't know them, they won't know us."
"But as they pursue scientific inquiry, they would no doubt investigate their origins. When they rise to our level of understanding, they would be bound to detect our hand at the controls. Would they then revere us or revile us?"
"Who cares?"
"How would we feel if we delved to our ultimate origins and found we were only some scientist's lab experiment?"
"Again I have to say, 'who cares?' Better than finding out you're a losing science fair project."
"Do we have the right to put anyone in such a position?"
"Let's find out first if we have the ability."
"We have no idea what might develop from such an experiment. It cannot be predicted."
"Then let's try it and find out. That's how science works. Try and learn. Isn't that what we do?"
"That doesn't mean we have to try everything."
"But this isn't some little experimental side path that we can just pass by on our way to knowledge. This is what it's all about. This isn't an experiment. This is The Experiment. This is where science has been going all these millennia: to stand where we stand now. This isn't just big. This is It."
Goson flopped back into his chair. "Really, Dr. Karth. You're way out of line here. With all due respect, your work, while impressive, is not the be-all and end-all of civilization."
"What could be bigger than creating a new world? Perhaps if there is a purpose to life, it is to do this. Just as we are individually completed by propelling our own genes into the next generation, perhaps we as a people must also plant our seeds. Not our genetic heritage, but our intellectual heritage. Somehow we came into being, and now we've progressed to the point where we can pass the chance on to someone else."
"You really believe it, don't you?" exclaimed Goson. "You think we really will be gods if we create a world!"
"Who is to say that it doesn't? What do we really know about our own gods anyway? Maybe they were like us, genetic engineers looking for a good lab."
"Really, Dr. Karth, don't be absurd," said Margeth.
"But don't..." began Karth.
"Enough," said Lesso suddenly, holding up his hand to cut off argument. They all turned to look at him.
"This is very hard for me," he said. He looked at Karth. "I'm sorry about this, Karth, but I've made my decision. I will not allow your experiment to continue."
Karth glared at him. "I refuse to accept that. You don't have the right. You have the authority to withhold funding, but I have ample means to continue without the expedition's funding."
"That won't work, Karth," said Goson. "You are a member of this expedition. Dr. Lesso has full authority over the scientific staff. Your staff are government employees. They are no longer yours to direct. You're through."
"Nonsense. As you should know, I supplied all my own equipment for this expedition. As for my staff, I will offer them the choice. They can try to transfer to another senior scientist's staff, or they can leave government service and become my employees. I have no problem with that. They are a highly-trained, dedicated group of men and women, totally committed to the importance of what we're trying to do. I am fully convinced that most, if not all, will accept my offer. My work must and shall continue."
"I'm sorry, Karth," said Lesso. "This ship remains my responsibility. In scientific matters I am the captain. Your laboratory is part of the expedition resources and is the property of the Unified Government. I can have it sealed against you, if it comes to that. Please be reasonable. When we get home, you can plead your case before the proper authorities, and perhaps you will get their permission. Until that time, my decision is final. Your project is terminated as of this moment."
"It must not be! We are so close! To stop it now would be to turn our backs on the future. It's as if we have walked thousands of miles to a beautiful palace, only to turn back when our hand is on the door. It is something we as a race must accomplish."
"The implications are simply too immense. I will not accept responsibility for it. The mission of this expedition is exploration and research. We are not chartered to create a new biota."
"The charter does not forbid it."
"The question did not arise. How could it? When we left no one dreamed that one day it would be possible."
"I dreamed it. And so did you, once."
"Well, perhaps I've grown more cautious in my old age. I will not take such a momentous step without authority from the highest levels of the government. I know my superiors, and I am convinced they would not want me to proceed without their explicit approval."
"You are making a momentous decision without their approval by terminating the project."
"But I am making the cautious decision. I don't think they will fault me for that. Perhaps they will give you approval to continue when we return."
"But that's years away. A project can't be simply put on a shelf for decades, then picked up and restarted like a clock. The staff will have wandered off to other work, some will have died, the knowledge and thought processes will have become stale. I'm no longer a young man myself. It could be generations before others can bring the technology back to the point we are at now, if ever. We have the people, the equipment, the knowledge now. We must make the attempt now, or run the risk of losing the chance forever."
"I'm sorry. You know my reasons. I think there's no more to be said. You may not continue the project on this ship. Choose another line of research and submit a proposal to the projects committee. We will make every attempt to keep your team intact. If not, I'm sure they will be eagerly recruited by the other projects. This inquiry is closed." Margeth and Goson pushed back their chairs.
"No!" shouted Karth, leaping to his feet. "You accuse me of trying to be a god, but aren't you trying to assume that role? I tell you, I don't need you. I donated the services of my personal yacht to this expedition, but it is still my property. I hereby detach it from expedition duties. I will take my equipment and any of my staff who wish to accompany me and we will leave the ship."
"What?" burst out Goson. "You can't be serious. We're in a remote arm of the galaxy. Your yacht isn't capable of reaching home alone. You would be trapped here. There's not a known inhabited planet for a hundred light-years."
"I don't want an inhabited planet, Dr. Goson," Karth said with a sardonic grin. "I'll build one."
"Karth, don't do this," said Lesso. "I beg of you."
"I must. I would prefer to remain with the expedition, have you all join me in this great work. But if not, I will do it alone. I have everything I need. Do you intend to try to stop me, Dr. Lesso?"
Lesso stared at his friend sadly. "No, I won't try to stop you. I know you well enough to know you will never give up. What would I do, put you in the brig for the rest of the voyage?"
"So I'm free to go?"
"If you insist, I don't feel that I can stop you. As you say, your equipment and the yacht are your property. I will insist, however, on being present when you meet with your team. I know how persuasive you can be. I will not have your staff browbeaten into throwing away their careers and possibly their lives to follow you. They must know that they have very promising positions with this expedition. There must be no coercion."
"Fair enough. I have no fears on that score. They will flock to me."
"I'll have to see that," said Goson. "They may be happy to work in your project, Dr. Karth, but they may be less than eager to be marooned on some nameless sterile planet with you for the rest of their lives."
Karth snapped his fingers airily. "As you say, we shall see. There will be no coercion."
"I beg you to reconsider, Dr. Karth," said Margeth. "This expedition was formed and embarked with such hope and unity, with the wishes of the people of dozens of planets. It is a terrible thing to be bickering and fractious now. We should stay together, see the voyage through."
"That would be my wish as well. But it seems that Dr. Lesso will not permit that to happen. If not, so be it. I will continue on my own."
"So you'll create this little world of yours, and then lord it over them some like petty tyrant? You're like a little boy playing king of his sand castle. Is that what you really want, to be a god of a made-up world?"
"If building a world makes me a god, then a god is what I must be, yes."
"The depth of your arrogance astounds me."
"Perhaps one day you will understand."
"What possible value will it be to build such a thing in such a hopelessly isolated place? No one will ever know if you succeeded or failed."
"I will know. And who knows, maybe someday the starships of my little world will fill your skies."
"You are mad, Karth."
"We shall see."
* * *
Within a week preparations were complete. As Karth had predicted, all but a handful of his staff had volunteered to go with him. The laboratory equipment had been broken down and stored in Karth's yacht. The yacht's genetic engineering and replicating equipment could supply all their needs. The staff members had made their farewells and were already aboard. The yacht stood fully loaded in the docking port. The gallery windows were lined with the solemnly watching faces of nearly the entire expedition staff. Now Dr. Karth and Dr. Lesso stood alone at the gangway.
"Well, I guess this is it," said Karth.
"I'm afraid so. My heart misgives me, old friend. I fear that you are making a terrible mistake."
"I know you do. But I must make the attempt."
"I know that as well. But I am filled with sadness." They stood looking at each other.
"I have always been very proud of you, Karth. I will miss you."
"I will miss you as well. I wish I could talk you into coming with me. Working together we could not fail."
"Part of me wants to go with you. What bothers me most is that I'll never know if you succeeded. I'll always wonder about you."
"Then come with me."
"No. My responsibility is to lead this expedition, and I will not abandon it."
"This is good-bye then." Karth held out his hand.
"Yes." They shook hands, then stood there, clasping each other's arms. Lesso cracked a wry smile. "I don't even know if I should wish you luck."
"I won't need luck. I'll need skill."
"I don't have to wish that on you. Though it may ring strange now after all that's been said, may God be with you."
Karth smiled. "Perhaps He is." He turned and walked up the gangway. At the top he turned and held up his arms to the watching faces at the windows. Some stared stonily, some applauded, silent behind the glass. He turned and looked down at Lesso.
"Do you know, Dr. Lesso? All the years we've known each other, you've always called me Karth, and I've always called you Dr. Lesso. I suppose it's just a holdover from when you were my professor. But you have been my friend much longer than you were my professor. Now at the end, I would like to part as equals, and as friends. I think it's time we were on a first name basis. Would that be acceptable?"
Lesso smiled. "Yes, I'd like that. I suppose if you're going to be a god, you should be referred to by your first name."
"I suppose so. Whatever happens, old friend, I want you to know I'll always give you the credit for the seminal work."
"Thank you. I appreciate that."
"Good-bye then, Jehovah."
"Good-bye, Satan."
copyright 1996 by Brian K. Crawford