The Chromosome Game

by Hodder-Williams, Christopher

  A gull refuels at a pond on the top of the westerly hill above the ravine, having circled the crumbling funeral-cake of the chateau and made a few test approaches within the narrow funnels that were once the tiny, narrow footpaths. The ground by the pond is softened by moisture and lies in the shadows; here there are nourishing worms and stick-insects to be snapped-up unawares. The gull replenishes his near-empty tanks for a medium-haul flight across to North Africa, where wonderfully cool lagoons lie on the shoreline of Tobruk. There, the gull will rejoin his mate, and check up on egg production. A family re-union is imminent and the gull will be on schedule. Emergency diversion location: Alexandria, for refuelling as necessary. Otherwise a non-stop direct flight to Tobruk. Navigational aids: Earth’s magnetic field; ESP from the gull community control tower; dead-reckoning for last leg and final approach.

  But the remnants of prehistoric stucco on the walls of Carross shrivel now, and chalkdust overlays the sumptuous mineral veneer enriching the soil below.

  Some of the powder drifts in a thin cloud over the ravine, then settles on that part of Kasiga that is exposed.

  *

  The C-in-C Transpacial Command closed the file on Planet Truth with mixed feelings.

  Although the entire operation could be regarded as a success the Anti-Gods had hit back savagely. Out of a total of fourteen transpacials, five had been annihilated through the use of Anti-Matter — a means of attack actually banned at the Blue Giant Convention. Casualties: 153 minigods — seventy-two of them female. These had been absorbed into Space/Time and had, of course, been converted back into Protons.

  When he’d counted the cost, the C-in-C reported to the Interrogod, eventually finding him in the Senior clubroom at the Hilton Complex. After giving the figures he added, ‘All I can say is, I hope it’s worth it.’

  The Interrogod did not reply with the cliché that it always was. He said, ‘All I can say is this, Field Marshall: We gave them the score on the Earth Holocaust; if they can’t learn from that then it’s no use mounting a further operation. Do you agree?’

  ‘You bet I agree.’

  The Interrogod glanced at him quizzically. ‘What you are really saying is that the attempt wasn’t justified in the first place. Am I right?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. All I can think of at present is the level of casualties. It’s rough. Right now, Interrogod, if I were something like homo sapiens —’

  ‘— You’d be ordering a large scotch.’

  ‘They were under my command. They trusted me, and …’ He gestured. ‘Easy to say you can’t win ’em all. Not so easy for the crews who got clobbered.’

  ‘General, you not only did your best. You did the best. It can’t be done better and well you know it … Seen today’s Times?’

  ‘Haven’t got around to reading the papers. Why? What’s in it?’

  ‘Piece by the Deputy Administrator, Milky Way.’

  ‘Do I have to —’

  ‘— I’ll summarise it for you. Now we’ve got the Stellascope back for the Kasiga project, looks like Huckman built-in the exit-hatch mechanism into one of the micro-processors on ZD-One.’

  ‘It had to be operated from somewhere. I don’t see —’

  ‘— You’re still cut-up about your losses, General.’

  You’re onto something.’

  Yes … Hardly a pretty picture though. As soon as I read the piece I phoned the liaison god. Between him and the tape engineer they’ve pieced together what went on behind the scenes over the P.E.A.C.E. Project. No wonder Dollenburg was so enraged … very sensitive to Supernature, that man. Saw the whole thing clear as daylight.’

  ‘Got any VTRs?’

  ‘Sound recordings only. And they’re more than enough. I have the written transcripts right here in my briefcase.’

  ‘You never let up.’

  ‘I haven’t been masterminding a major Transtellar operation, General … Turns out Slazenger did know Professor Huckman. He thought Huckman was a sham but couldn’t prove it. If only Slazenger had heard the tapes then — the ones I’ve just had transcribed — things might have been very different. He would have gone straight to the UN.’

  ‘So there were meetings between Slazenger and Huckman prior to the Commissioning of Kasiga?’

  ‘That’s perfectly correct, General.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Huckman and Ricardo had decided that in the event of the professional crew of Kasiga — including the Captain and the officers — dying out early on, Hawkridge and Slazenger were to be assigned the running of the ship.’

  ‘Cold blooded bastards! Imagine calculating on the demise of the very people they’d conned into boarding an escape vessel —’

  ‘— Anyway, Slazenger knew there had been some tape transcripts that we knew nothing about. He mentioned them to me at the Hilton.’

  ‘How’d he know?’

  ‘Dollenburg leaked it. Once Dollenburg knew there was no way either of stopping the Kasiga enterprise or of changing its programme he thought the least he could do was try and warn Hawkridge and Slazenger. But he had to do it circumspectly. You will recall that Dollenburg was by this time under CIA surveillance. All he could do was hint that all was not what it seemed. At the same time Slazenger didn’t make the connection. Now he’s figured it out.’

  ‘Rather late in the day. May I see the transcript?’

  ‘Right here, General.’

  ‘You seem … hesitant.’

  ‘History-Shock … I just find it hard to believe that people at that level could contemplate Futureworld while pissed out of their minds in some crumby New York bar.’

  ‘No? My credibility gap disappeared down a black hole on Day One of this Enquiry. Come on, hand it over.’

  *

  TRANSCRIPT FROM TAPE. (STELLAGRAPHIC COPY)

  Huckman: You reckon on around fifty per-cent survival?

  Ricardo: That’s what we have, er, here on this estimate. Naturally this is a ball-park figure.

  Huckman: Dollenburg insists it should be assumed a lot higher.

  Ricardo: You can’t fly in the face of statistics. We ran tests on —

  Huckman: — He makes the point that when we experimented using human embryos we hit one hundred per-cent.

  Ricardo: With intensive care supervision … from your people. The key folios on this thing clarify the issue. Moreover there was no way to simulate the 300 year gap. Some of the semen will go sour on us —

  Huckman: And a lot of it won’t.

  Ricardo: Maybe. But we have to be realistic. We could not possibly store supplies to keep two hundred guys and dolls ticking long enough to fully develop.

  Huckman: What you’re saying is there’s got to be wastage whether we like it or not. Dollenburg is not going to like that.

  Ricardo: Dollenburg is not going to know. It’s a case of the survival of the fittest.

  Huckman: Okay. I guess Jews are not good survivors, mustn’t forget Dollenburg is a Jew. He presses for a hundred per-cent survival yet his race has a problem surviving!

  Ricardo: Alex, I want you to know I’m keeping Dollenburg right out of this. Given we have to accept a small proportion of non-Aryan semen —

  Huckman: — I think we should de-conceive that aspect of the thing. Why the hell perpetuate jews and blacks when — if what you say is true — we only wind up with one hundred survivors?

  Ricardo: You’re forgetting the President has not yet pushed the vital clauses of the Race Bill through the Senate. We have to think of the look of the thing.

  Huckman: Except who’ll be looking?

  Ricardo: The other incubants. And if they don’t like what they see —

  Huckman: — I get the picture.

  Ricardo: In any event, Aryans are stronger. They’ll be better equipped to take the abrupt change in environment, once they disembark. Climate control on ZD will be precise, idealised.

  Huckman: That seems wrong to me. We should vary the temperature and humidity so they’re p
repared for Exodus.

  Ricardo: Funny word for you to use, Alex … Exodus!

  Huckman: Yep. It is a funny word. But use any word you like, those incubants have to have resistance to viruses and bacteria we don’t even know about.

  Ricardo: Good point. And I’m right there with you. But we take it gradual and we don’t start too soon. With only a fifty per-cent survival level we cannot have epidemic outbreaks on board, especially during pubescence and peak educational phases.

  Huckman: So how do we time this acclimatisation?

  Ricardo: That’s a technical point I’ll raise with the Health Committee.

  Huckman: I would guess those incubants will be cooked and ready to serve by the age of, say, sixteen, seventeen … Not before.

  Ricardo: Sounds right. That means we want to program the internal weather for increasing changes from when the incubants are in the region of fifteen years old. I wouldn’t mind being around that deck when some of those juicy female youngsters hit that stage of development.

  Huckman: You and your thing about virgins.

  Ricardo: Listen, tell me who has not had a stand the size of Mount Palomar Telescope at those teenage micro-broads making with the basket ball bit? Little short skirts and gym pants flying around the court when what they really want to be is screwed.

  Huckman: You’re kidding yourself, most of those innocent kids with the flounces and tight knickers don’t stay around just watching television in this day and age, and they won’t in that day and age … and you have the wrong telescope. Mount Palomar is the wrong type — squat as a Jew’s scrotum.

  Ricardo: You wanna be more practical about your jew-views, Alex. Around that age who cares if they’re jews? What the hell other reason do you think I had for that peace mission to Israel? For all practical purposes, a jew girl doesn’t get me racially concerned until after she’s twenty-one.

  Huckman: How did you make out? Hand on the Bible, how did you make out?

  Ricardo: Don’t ask me direct questions alter the fourth double.

  Huckman: Try a fifth double. You have me transfixed. Jewgirl gym pants and you, doing the Gaza Strip. Come on, howd’ya make out?

  Ricardo: Okay, they’re stand-offish. There was this bus —

  Huckman: — Forget the bus. You flunked out. And I’ll tell you why. Because fundamentally you do not care for Jewish whores, and you knew inside this kid in the bus was a whore, and somehow you communicated you were hostile to the whole idea, I mean, on the face of it you don’t have principles; but underneath — and I do happen to mean underneath — you have these principles, whether you like ’em or not, so the girl feels that you are giving her the brush-off, and she makes it seem the other way around.

  Ricardo: Let’s ease up on the swastikas, Alex. You got it real bad. Getting back to the point —

  Huckman: — You mean you can now take your mind off these busloads of succulant virgins who have not been virgins since they were twelve?

  Ricardo: Let’s just say I’ll take you up on another drink.

  Huckman: Okay.

  Ricardo: So where were we?

  Huckman: Variations in atmosphere, Deck ZD-One, to acclimatise —

  Ricardo: — Sure. Well I think that some of the guys will become all technological and nosy concerning their environment —

  Huckman: — like where they are, what time it is, how to get the hell out of there.

  Ricardo: Right. We make damn sure they do not. They do not get out. Not until ready. So we don’t have some primitive hatch they just push open and get into the main part of Kasiga when they’re only done medium-rare. Get what I mean? We lock them in, make real sure of it.

  Huckman: So the means of exit has to be hooked up with the main programs, the control software, buried in it —

  Ricardo: — Yeah, something like that. Let’s say the incubants are programmed to leave the ship in groups. That means the key to the door has to be accessible via each of the micro-processors installed for each group, I mean the micros normally used for teaching and interrogation by individuals who want, ar, extrapolations on the technical data in the teaching programs.

  Huckman: You mean you can still say ‘extrapolations’ after five doubles?

  Ricardo: I can extrapolate over fifteen year-olds after a hell of a sight more than that … Yeah, we build the exit code into the instructions but it should be accessed by each group at the proper time via the micro allotted to each.

  Huckman: Check.

  *

  Sladey-555 waits just by Cubicle E as Scorda emerges, crestfallen and uneasy, from his Computalk.

  Sladey has a hollowed, narrow face, pallid and somehow incomplete, like a painting that has been abandoned for want of the bizarre tints needed for executing the finished product. The artist has not yet attempted the eyebrows properly, they are almost entirely absent, giving the portrait the curious property of forcing the eye to start at the chin and work up towards the pinched-in brow. The subject of the painting is not ugly in the accepted sense; indeed, the face portrayed is arresting. But what of the individual who has been sitting for such a seemingly inconclusive canvas?

  For a start, Sladey-555 is abnormally thin, right the way down, no shoulders worth mentioning, no waist of any holographic consequence; no hips, and the knees are sunken, like so much of his personality.

  But behind the photofit face that doesn’t fit, there has been developing a propensity for opportunism, a sensitised plate responsive only to those vibes in the collective personality of the incubants which might, at some future date, combine to form the antidote to his spindly appearance. Habitually he adopts a mannered pose, relieved only by sleazy wit and evasive repartee.

  In amongst the incubants he has been charging a weak battery with other people’s power supply.

  He sees in Scorda-099 not so much a leader as a vulgar but useful dupe who is intellectually stagnant — an inarticulate source of electricity which has now activated the sulphuric acid within Sladey’s own accumulator. Like crude oil, Scorda lacks the refinement needed for preventing his own inner machinery from getting clogged. Sladey will distil what can be used …

  To Scorda, Sladey said, ‘Did you find anything out?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The food reserves.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  ‘Are we being sulky, Scorda? Not a good time with the Controller, then? Didn’t it offer you a nice milk-special?’

  ‘It did not.’

  ‘You messed it up, you silly little man.’

  ‘You can drop that tone right now, Sladey.’

  ‘Bad as that, eh? … Did you at least lay the foundations for using Trell’s code-number? — So that you can access the thingimajig concerning the delicate little matter of what remains in the larder?’

  ‘The Controller was … unfriendly.’

  ‘My dear fellow. We do not refer to bits of machinery as unfriendly. That thing will tie itself in knots, Scorda, by the time we’ve finished with it.’

  ‘You think so?’

  Sladey tipped his head slightly to one side. ‘Come on, Scorda-Boy. Mustn’t be all upset by a box of tricks.’

  ‘What do you want me to do, then?’

  What we planned. Who knows what you might not come up with?’

  ‘That’s just it. I might not.’

  ‘Starving to death is frightfully boring, Scorda. Not that I have ever actually done it, but does it sound like fun to you?’

  ‘Okay, I’ll do it. You win.’

  ‘We both win, Scorda. We must.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll interrogate the micro as 484.’

  ‘Sensible fellow. I had a feeling you liked to eat. Not that I couldn’t teach you a few table manners, but we can work on that when we check-out the position regarding cuisine.’

  ‘Cuisine?’

  ‘Never mind. A rose by any other name … Oh, I suppose that’s no good, either. Want to die hungry?’

  A terrified expression dilated Scorda’s hol
low eyes. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No!’

  Scorda-099 activated the keyboard and video-display of Microprocessor Oscar-1.

  Switching to Transaction Programming: Interrogation Mode, he got this:

  *

  Scorda: Go to Data Level 3 for file search.

  Micro: State file-store number.

  Scorda: Display total content of Level 3.

  Micro: Enter your identity number.

  *

  For a few seconds, Scorda-099 hesitated. Did he dare to lie about his identity number? Once discovered, this would turn out to be a major offence. He didn’t love the computer; and he knew the computer didn’t love him. On the other hand he could not hope to access status of supplies in his own name.

  So Scorda-099 typed-in the figure ‘484’.

  Micro: 484. Levels 3 and 4 reserved Flight Simulator Module.

  Scorda: Go to Level 5.

  Micro: Do you wish to work Remote Job Entry to main network?

  This time, Scorda panicked. The very last thing he wanted was a through-line to the Controller.

  His hands shaking, he carefully typed-in the next command:

  Scorda: Negative. Confirm back to me that this is a stand-alone transaction, rpt stand-alone, offline.

  Micro: Level 5 normally reserved RJE only.

  Scorda: Stay offline or I cancel.

  Micro: State authority for this?

  Scorda: This is authorised CANCEL THAT. Activities certain incubants subversive. Do not wish to inform on them. Informing INVALIDATED by Controller. Prior to taking this matter further wish to obtain data relevant to these furtive activities with a view to assessing gravity of their actions.

  Micro: Wait.

  *

  Scorda was sweating profusely. He knew what the command ‘wait’ would mean in this context. The micro would immediately interrogate the main network for validation for so unusual mode of accessing a privileged information level.

  So he grabbed the group of hook-up lines at the back of the micro-processor and pulled them clear. At the same time he depressed the red key which temporarily froze the software within the micro, so that the machine had no means of knowing what he was really doing.