Page 97 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

The Vorax

people! Soon the suicides became our farmers, as well. I hope your
plan does not resemble that one.”
“No, no, Mr. Legge! Not at all. I will release the patent into the
public domain before a single Vorax is delivered to your country—or
any other. Private profit cannot stand in the way of progress!
Furthermore, the entities will be parthogenetic—self-reproducing and
therefore unchanging except for unavoidable mutations. But it would
be decades before any such alteration would even be noticeable, and
by that time any malfunctioning Vorax could be easily replaced from
the plethora of the original ancestors’ descendants still retaining the
essential phenotype.”
I nodded. “And you would need funding to develop this on your
own and keep the rights to it out of the capitalists’ hands? I think I
understand.” The dull light of stupidity shone in my eyes without
recourse to any dimmer switch. “Are there any details you can give
me about it? How big is it? What does it look like? What kind of
special habitat would it require inside the household of a poor
family?”
He got up, pawed through papers on his kitchen table-cum-
workbench and pulled out a large sketch. It was a line drawing of an
animal completely cooked up in the simmering stewpot of the artist’s
imagination. No doubt the weaker elements of its anatomy, unable to
stand the heat, had boiled away and been replaced by sterner stuff. It
did not follow the normal bilateral symmetry of most land creatures,
bypassing that quaint constraint in favor of the Swiss Army knife’s
multi-purpose extremities. I’m sure it had only the senses imperative
for its work, and would not yield to ordinary diseases or poisons in its
diet. But that brain…I couldn’t help asking.
“It certainly looks like it means business,” I said, in the voice of a
judicious layman. “What controls it internally? I mean, can you really
cobble together a brain that fits the rest of the body?”
“Ah, I see your concern.” Goodman turned up his palms in
placation. “You needn’t have one: these limbs and organs, body
chemistry and behavioral patterns—all have inherent internal
compatibility. That is, components are not simply grafted to each
other in a random shuffle by a surgeon looking for the needle in the
haystack that will guarantee integrity. That is typical of last century’s
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