“With intelligence, you can see the need to show discipline when the situation calls for it. Or to act aggressively. Or not. I would argue that the human mind is mutable enough that it can become all of the different types of people that Camila, A?da, and Tekla have been describing. But that’s all driven by what separates us from the animals. Which is our brains.”
“There are many different types of intelligence,” Luisa said.
Ivy gave a little shake of her head. “I’ve seen all of that stuff about emotional intelligence and what have you. Okay. Fine. But you know exactly what I’m talking about. And you know it can be propagated genetically. Just look at the academic records, the test scores of the Ashkenazi Jews.”
“Speaking as a Sephardic Jew,” Luisa said, “you can imagine my mixed feelings.”
“We need brains, is the bottom line,” Ivy said. “We’re not hunter-gatherers anymore. We’re all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn’t bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It’s our ability to master complex technological skills. It is our ability to be nerds. We need to breed nerds.” She turned to look A?da full in the face. “You ask for realism. Your complaint about her”—she nodded at Julia—“and the people around her was that they were holding out panaceas. Not facing facts. Fine. I’m giving you facts. We’re all nerds now. We might as well get good at it.”
A?da shook her head in derision. “You completely leave out the human component. It’s why you are a bad leader. It’s why you were replaced by Markus, when wiser people than you were in control. And it’s why we are here.”
“Here, safe and sound,” Ivy said, “unlike the people who followed you. All of whom are dead.”
“So they are,” A?da said, “and I am alive, and I can see how it’s going to be: you are going to keep me locked up in an arklet making genetic freak babies and taking them away from me.” And she broke down weeping.
“She has what I have, except worse,” Julia explained. “She sees many outcomes—most of which, given the circumstances, are dark—then acts upon them.”
“What an unusual degree of introspection from you, Julia,” Moira said.
“You have no concept of my level of introspection,” Julia shot back. “I have been clinically depressed for most of my life. I once used drugs to fix it. Then I stopped. I stopped because I decided they were making me stupid, and I’d rather be miserable than stupid. I am what I am.”
“Depression is genetically based to some extent. Would you like me to erase it from your children’s genomes?” Moira asked.
“You heard what I said,” Julia answered. “You know, now, the decision I made. Which was to suffer for the greater good. Because society will go astray if there are not those who, like me, imagine many outcomes. Let those scenarios run rampant in their minds. Anticipate the worst that could happen. Take steps to prevent it. If the price of that—the price of having a head full of dark imaginings—is personal suffering, then so be it.”
“But would you wish that on your progeny?”
“Of course not,” Julia said. “If there were a way to have one without the other—the foresight without the misery—I would take it in a heartbeat.”
“We only need a few people of this mentality,” Tekla said. “Too many, and you get the Soviet Union.”
“I am forty-seven,” Julia said. “I have one baby in me, if I’m lucky. The rest of you can punch them out for twenty years. Do the math.”
“It amazes me that we have already gone over to the competitive angle!” Camila wailed. “I am so sorry that I brought this topic up.”
A sharp rapping noise brought the room to attention.
Heads turned toward the Banana’s window. It was not large—about the size of a dinner plate. For three years it had been buried in ice and forgotten about. But now it afforded a clear if somewhat dizzying view of their surroundings.
Outside of it, carabinered to the spinning torus, was Dinah. She had put on a space suit and gone out through an airlock.
Seeing she had their attention, she reached up and slapped a small object onto the glass. It was a lump of clay, some wires, and an electronic gadget. She depressed a button on the gadget and it began to count down from ten minutes.
A?da screamed with laughter and clapped her hands.
“What on earth is she doing?” Julia asked.
“That’s a demolition charge,” Ivy said. “It’s going to kill us all ten minutes from now if she doesn’t take it off the window.” She turned to survey the room.
“Well, what is her point?” Julia demanded.
“I think my friend is trying to tell us that if we can’t settle this in ten minutes, the human race doesn’t deserve to go on existing,” Ivy said.