"But I did," said Baker calmly. "All very subconsciously, of course, but I did try to commit suicide. The crystals triggered it. I'll explain how in a minute, but since Sam Atkins was an ethical being he felt the responsibility for what had happened to me. He had to reveal himself to the extent of saving my life—and helping me to change so that the suicidal drive would not appear again. He did this, but it revealed too much of himself and destroyed the chance of completing his program. When he gets back home, he's really going to catch hell for lousing up the works. It's too bad."
Jim Ellerbee let out a long breath. "Sam Atkins—somebody from another world—it doesn't seem possible. What things he could have taught us if he'd stayed!"
Fenwick wondered why it had to have been Baker to receive this knowledge. Baker, the High Priest of the Fixed Position, the ambassador of Established Authority. Why couldn't Sam Atkins—or whatever his real name might be—have whispered just a few words of light to a man willing to listen and profit? His bowels felt sick with the impact of opportunity forever lost.
"How did the crystals trigger a suicidal reaction?" asked Fenwick finally, as if to make conversation more than anything else.
Baker's face seemed to glow. "That's the really important thing I learned from Sam. I learned that about me—about all of us. It's hard to explain. I experienced it—but you can only hear about it."
"We're listening," said Fenwick dully.
"I saw a picture of a lathe in a magazine a few months ago," said Baker slowly. "You can buy one of these lathes for $174,000, if you want one. It's a pretty fancy job. The lathe remembers what it does once, and afterwards can do it again without any instructions.
"The lathe has a magnetic tape memory. The operator cuts the first piece on the lathe, and the tape records all the operations necessary for that production. After that, the operator needs only to insert the metal stock and press the start button.
"There could be a million memories in storage, and the lathe could draw on any one of them to repeat what it had done before at any time in its history."
"I don't see what this has got to do with Sam and you," said Fenwick.
Baker ignored him. "A long time ago a bit of life came into existence. It had no memory, because it was the first. But it faced the universe and made decisions. That's the difference between life and nonlife. Did you know that, Fenwick? The capacity to make decisions without pre-programming. The lathe is not alive because it must be pre-programmed by the operator. We used to say that reproduction was the criterion of life, but the lathe could be pre-programmed to build a duplicate of itself, complete with existing memories, if that were desired, but that would not make it a living thing.
"Spontaneous decision. A single cell can make a simple binary choice. Maybe nothing more complex than to be or not to be. The decision may be conditioned by lethal circumstances that permit only a 'not' decision. Nevertheless, a decision
"In the beginning, the first bit of life faced the world and made decisions, and memory came into being. The structures of giant protein molecules shifted slightly in those first cells and became a memory of decisions and encounters. The cells split and became new pairs carrying in each part giant patterned molecules of the same structure. These were memory tapes that grew and divided and spread among all life until they carried un-numbered billions of memories.
"Molecular tapes. Genes. The memory of life on earth, since the beginning. Each new piece of life that springs from parent life comes equipped with vast libraries of molecular tapes recording the experiences of life since the beginning.
"Life forms as complex as mammals could not exist without this tape library to draw upon. The bodily mechanisms could not function if they came into existence without the taped memories out of the ages, explaining why each organ was developed and how it should function. Sometimes, part of the tapes
Just as the lathe operator has a choice of tapes which will cause the lathe to function in different ways, so does new life have a choice. The accumulated instructions and wisdom of the whole race may be available, except for those tapes which have been lost or destroyed through the ages. New life has a choice from that vast library of tapes. In its inexperience, it relies on the parentage for the selection of many proven combinations, and so we conclude certain characteristics are 'dominant' or 'inherited', but we haven't been able to discover the slightest reason why this is so.