Whitman persisted. “Dr. Cunningham, while looking for an investment vehicle, we discovered GENRECT has become the founding investor in Human Enhancements, which operates out of a number of health spas like Heaven’s Gate in San Diego’s North County. Dr. Gordon Hill is now working for Human Enhancements while still on the GENRECT payroll.”
Milo looked at Blaise, gauging his reaction.
Blaise shrugged. “Dr. Hill works where he pleases, particularly if someone pays him.” More interesting to Blaise was Uncle Milo’s apparent failure to tell his friends that the well-known Dr. Cunningham had been given the boot by GENRECT.
“Even if Dr. Hill’s work constitutes a hazard to the health and social structure of American society?” Whitman thrust his jaw out.
“I’m unaware of the problem,” Blaise said truthfully. “Someone would picket the ark if Noah didn’t file an environmental impact statement.”
Milo’s overwhelming voice cut Whitman off. “Human Enhancements has only one product. For six weeks and sixty thousand dollars they guarantee a ten percent increase in IQ.”
Blaise concentrated on his ginger ale.
“It’s no secret to people with money. You see, Dr. Cunningham, the treatment works ”
Blaise glanced around the table. No one seemed startled by Milo’s revelation. “How do they determine intelligence?” he asked.
“Cleverly, Doctor. Once for the record, and once for status. Moneyed people often value status more than records.” Milo dominated the table with a puppeteer’s control.
“The client takes a standard intelligence test anywhere he wishes. This gives a base number. Then he takes the treatment. Six weeks later he repeats the tests. Some do better than others, but everyone improves at least ten percent.”
“What’s the problem?” Blaise asked. “The rich get smarter, thus richer. The poor get what they always get.” He looked about the table glittering with evidences of intelligence and wealth. By background he belonged with them. Philosophically he considered each man an island.
Professor Hazeltine aimed the stem of his pipe at Blaise. “How do they do it? This is what we must know.”
“Why not spend your sixty thousand and find out?” Hazeltine surprised Blaise by not answering and instead looking toward Milo. Milo raised an eyebrow.
“The company spins moonbeams about vitamins and hypnosis—tapping the hidden resources of the human brain. I don’t believe it. They’re doing something dangerous and illegal. And their clients include the most important people in this country.” Hazeltine bit down on his pipe.
Blaise stared down the table at the accumulation of wealth and education. “People have the right to their own choices.” Milo stood and smiled. “I know our attitude seems strange, Dr. Cunningham. Some of the people involved are those who control society. But Human Enhancements is not just treating them. The only criterion for selection is sixty thousand dollars. What happens when people without scruples or morals seize power from the natural, experienced leaders?” Blaise knew now was the time to keep his mouth shut. But these people were just too much. “In other words,” he said, “now that we all have ours, let’s slam the door.”
To his surprise there were no gasps of outrage. They waited in polite silence. “I would assume,” he continued, “that if smarter, they’ll become the new leaders—no better, no worse. I see no embarrassment of ethics among our current establishment.” Echoing in the back of his mind was Dean Carden’s “morals of movie stars” dismissal. But the dean was not at this table.
“And then,” Milo overrode Blaise’s dismissal, “perhaps something happens. The treatment turns out to be lethal. Catch twenty-two. Society could collapse.”
“Is that a prediction, Dr. Burkhalter?”
“There would be no natural selection!” Hazeltine kicked his chair back and stood, fists clenched with emotion. “Intelligent women would marry stupid men without knowing it. The gene pool will be watered down.”
“Stupid women have been capturing smart men since the Ice Age,” Blaise said. “If ruling-class daughters have both beauty and intelligence, that’s their good luck.”
“We don’t need your answer immediately, Dr. Cunningham.” Milo stood behind the table. “Why don’t you talk to some of our group. I believe you will ultimately see things differently.
“Gentlemen, if you would like to present our case to Dr. Cunningham individually . . .” Milo smiled benignly and left. Several men approached Blaise immediately. Linda materialized beside him with a drink.
“. . . delighted to have a man of your stature here, Doctor.” The first man to capture Blaise was in his late forties and smooth as a polished worry bead. He had dark eyes and a Roman nose and a perfect set of teeth that Blaise would have sworn were all rerooted and capped. And that was just appearances. Blaise couldn’t help wondering what he would pay for extra twelve points of IQ.
“The audience is even more special, uh, Doctor.” Blaise didn’t try to dredge up the man’s name. Every introduction had been Dr. “So-and-so.” He jiggled his glass and took a swallow.
Undiluted vodka hit his stomach like a bag of Redicrete. A wave of warmth momentarily paralyzed him.
“Thank you, but no one here has captured a Nobel Prize. We’d all like to, of course. As Milo said, sometimes we’ll pay more for appearance than for substance.”
“Is that what this is about? Appearances? To be the first to recognize the dangers of a new science?”
The man laughed. “You understand the aging intellectual too well, Dr. Cunningham. You’ll have no surprises later.”
“My parents raised me to believe that surprises find their provenance in the realm of sloppy thinking.
“Not a happy condition, Doctor. It leaves the individual with no way to pass off his failings.” He chuckled and raised his glass. “Skaal.”
Automatically, Blaise raised his glass.
Soon they ran together in Blaise’s mind. Linda brought drinks and stood where he could smell her perfume and after a while he forgot why he had been set on refusing more liquor.
As he grew more wobbly he felt more acute. He was used to alcohol. He started laughing. The man talking stopped and smiled until he was done. He pressed a drink on Blaise and said something Blaise immediately forgot. In time the room became stark with brilliant colors against a background in hardedge. Then he was in a soft bed in a room filled with moonlight. Something moved next to him and he looked down on the top of Linda’s boyish hair cut.
“What happened?”
She stretched, throwing covers down, exposing her warm, naked body. “You were talking and then for no reason you started to get rough with me and we decided you ought to go to bed. When I got you here, you wouldn’t get into bed alone.”
“Where’s here?”
“My room.”
Blaise felt a band tightening around his chest. He wasn’t going to be able to stand it if he started choking. But already he was having trouble breathing. “Did I say anything?”
“About what?” Linda had burrowed under the covers, her back against Blaise.
“About Gordon?”
“I don’t think so. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you didn’t say anything.”
Her body was warm against his and the furious activity in his head diminished. “Did I say anything about Mount Sinai?”
“Nothing about Moses either. Go to sleep.”
Blaise lay like prestressed concrete until the gentle rhythm of Linda’s breathing lulled him.
What did he know that these people wanted?
“Blaise. Get up!” Linda was tugging at his arm. He felt a headache gathering behind his ears.
“What’s wrong?”
“You must get up!”
The sky was still blacked out by overcast that hid the stars and moon. The ground, an infinity away in a black plunge from the bedroom window, was invisible. Bewildered, he began dressing. She led him through
a hallway he didn’t remember to the elevator. While the motor whined Linda examined him.
“Brush your hair back.”
Blaise did his best with his hands. She straightened his tie and fluffed his jacket. “Don’t say anything.”
The elevator halted and she opened the door. “Hello, Jon,” she said. “I didn’t think you were coming tonight.” The man beside Linda’s uncle was tall and slender with a porcelainlike fragility. He had blue eyes, long black eyelashes, and the pale skin of aristocracy.
“I thought I should come by and meet Dr. Cunningham before he leaves San Francisco. He means so much to the group . . .”
He was older than Blaise and much the same physically. He was also so drunk that words didn’t work in his mouth.
“Yes,” Milo said. “Dr. Cunningham, Dr. Jonathan Peters. Linda’s husband is also a member of our group.”
Uncle Milo said more, but Blaise didn’t hear. He struggled to weld his face into immobility.
Peters looked from Blaise to Linda and his face changed. “I knew you wanted to know, Milo,” he said. “Was it worth it?” He had turned his back on Linda.
“Come, my boy.” Milo took Peters’ arm and steered him toward the front room. “Why don’t we sit down and talk?”
“I think I’d better get back to San Diego,” Blaise said. “I have some things to do there.”
“Like talking to Dr. Hill?”
“Yes. That, too.”
“Excellent, Doctor. Excellent.”
“I’ll take Dr. Cunningham to the airport.” Linda opened a hall closet and took out a wrap.
“Don’t go,” Peters said. “I’ve got to talk to you.”
“I’ll be back, Jon.” Linda kissed him on the cheek and then stepped into the elevator. Blaise went with her.
“You don’t understand, Linda.” Peter’s voice was desperate. “I took the treatment. I’m going to be different.” His face was white and sweaty as he strained toward the closing elevator door. He would have grabbed the door but Blaise could see Milo’s white-knuckled hand digging into Peter’s arm. The door clunked shut and the elevator motor whined. Blaise didn’t say anything. Nor did Linda.
She drove the unpredictable up-and-down streets as if afraid of the dark, venting her feelings by flooring the accelerator to wing through the void like a low-flying jet on a moonless night.
Blaise sat numb, not caring if Linda was trying to plow into an eighteen-wheeler. At San Francisco International, she parked the Porsche in the storage lot and got out. “Aren’t you going home?”
She shook her head.
“Your husband’s waiting.”
“I’ll call from San Diego.”
Blaise was fresh out of small talk. He got tickets and came to sit next to her in the lobby. “Twenty minutes.”
She looked at the tickets and nodded. Looked at her watch. “I didn’t want to talk about my rings.”
“Yes.”
“Well. Now you know. One was the engagement ring and the other was a wedding ring. Together they looked like a double-banded cocktail ring.”
“They weren’t.”
“No.” She stopped talking.
They had been in the air only minutes when the drinks Linda had consumed earlier drove her to the restroom.
The man coming down the aisle was under average height, with leathery skin that had seen much weather. He wore a blue pinstripe with vest and an electric blue tie. He lowered himself into Linda’s seat.
“The seat is taken.” Blaise examined the man carefully. “Only be a moment.” The voice reeked of New Jersey. Capicia italiano?”
Blaise hesitated.
“We could speak Spanish, but so do half the people on this plane.” The man, who looked Italian, switched to Church Latin. Blaise knew a different style of pronunciation but he understood. Just as he was getting the hang of it the man in the pinstripe suit stared toward the central aisle.
Blaise looked in the same direction. The profile of a Roman-collared priest seemed familiar.
Abruptly the stranger switched to Old English, quoting a line from Beowulf about the gar Dena. When Blaise nodded he added a pithy line about heads lining the path.
Blaise nodded. “Na und?” he asked.
“Do not awaken sleeping monsters.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
“I’m a testimonial.” The man in the pinstripe winked. “Six months ago I was a street runner. Button man. Know what I mean?”
Blaise said nothing.
“Now I ride airplanes and talk to a better class of citizen. I remember things I couldn’t even pronounce before. I owe it all to a Human Enhancement seminar. You get me, citizen?”
“This is your endorsement?”
“You too can be like me. M-O-N-E-Y opens the door. Course, you don’t need it, friend, but I tell you, it’s worth a year of smack in a single stack. Got me?”
“I copy.”
“Ten-four. Everything has a price tag. Jason collected the golden fleece. My man is a heavy investor in GENRECT.”
“And Tenro?”
The stranger grinned. “You’ve been doing your homework. Now, I’m just trying to get ahead. Don’t make it hard, pal. I got myself off the street, but I’m still just a button man looking for a step up. You don’t want to be that step.”
“How does it work?”
The man riffled his hair behind and below his right ear. “An injection and a couple of weeks later you start remembering better and thinking clearer. Painless.”
Blaise saw a purple, pencil-eraser-sized spot under abundant black hair.
“My beauty spot. Oh—excuse me. Your husband and I were having a chat.” He stood and smiled at Linda before stepping over Blaise’s knees to surrender her seat.
“How did you know I’d be here?” Blaise asked.
“Why, Mr. Peters, don’t you recall telephoning to let us know you were going home?” He had an engaging smile.
“Peters?” Linda asked as she slid in. “Who’s that?”
“Stranger.” Blaise let it go. No point in telling her more people than just her uncle’s crowd were interested in what they were doing. For the rest of the flight his eyes kept rolling around to study the priest. He wasn’t sure.
The study of intelligence is paramount to the continuation of mankind as the dominant species.
FROM A SEMINAR ON
THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS
CHAPTER 13
Helen opened the door and said, “Bite ’em, Dobie.”
The Doberman whined and wagged his hind end and then, unable to stand it any longer, stood on his back feet to lick Blaise.
“It’s nice to be wanted,” Blaise said to no one in particular. “Go for a walk, Dobie?”
Rumbling deep in his throat, Dobie did a hula.
Helen examined Linda in a way Blaise didn’t like much. “Come on, Dobie,” he said.
“I thought you were staying in San Francisco, Linda.”
“My plans changed. Blaise invited me to stay at his place. I do so love La Jolla.”
Linda’s voice was syrupy, Helen’s too reasonable. Blaise let Dobie tug him out of the line of fire. They walked to a wood shack chalet with a red neon beer in the window. A smaller sign said telephone. Blaise patted Dobie, pointed at the sidewalk, and said, “Stay.” Dobie looked at him with reproachful eyes.
He bought beer and change from a beach-bunny barmaid and found the phone next to the restrooms.
Helen answered.
“Hi, Helen. I was wondering . . .” But she was not listening. Far away he heard her frosty voice say, “It’s for you.”
“Blaise?”
“Linda? What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t tell me you had an . . . arrangement . . . with this woman.” Linda’s voice reeked with artificial warmth.
“We’re business partners. Honestly, Linda. Just ask her.” Blaise’s hand was sweaty. Linda’s voice went tinny as she turned from the mouthpiece. “Blaise says yo
u’re business partners.”
Helen’s faint “Ha!” did not require interpretation. The phone went dead.
Heaven’s Gate was long-distance and the phone wouldn’t accept a charge card so he had to sort change. The receptionist said that Dr. Hill didn’t accept calls, but would call back when he could. Three minutes abruptly ran out.
He put in another quarter and dialed a Rancho Bernardo number. When he got Mrs. Hill at her mother’s house in the posh bedroom community his quarter came back and he had to put in forty-five cents.
“It’s me again. Blaise Cunningham.”
“Have you seen Gordon?”
“No. I wanted to know if you’d talked to him.” Blaise mentally kicked himself. Mrs. Hill sobbed quietly. “Mrs. Hill?”
The sobbing stopped. “Yes?”
“Gordon hasn’t been in touch with you?”
“No.” There was a pause while Mrs. Hill thought about what she was going to say. The operator came on line and asked for more money. Blaise fed in coins.
“Mrs. Hill . . .” Blaise shook the phone gently as if he was shaking the woman at the other end. “Mrs. Hill, crying isn’t going to help.”
She sniffled and composed herself. “Gordon’s checks are deposited in the bank. But he doesn’t call, he doesn’t come see me. The GENRECT people won’t tell me where he is.” Mrs. Hill’s voice turned shrill.
“The children want their father. The police won’t do anything. They say it’s not a criminal matter.”
“Did you talk with Dr. Hemmett again?”
“He said Gordon is all right, but he was doing some delicate work and he would get in touch with me later. Dr. Hemmett threatened not to talk to me if I said anything to you.”
Blaise felt a sudden frisson. “Perhaps you shouldn’t, Mrs. Hill. I just stirred them up the last time.”
“What have they done to him?” She had overtaken her emotions and subdued them. Stella Hill still cried, but her voice had a touch of steel.
“Mrs—Mrs. Hill!” The sobbing continued. “Mrs. Hill!”
Blaise shouted. “I know where your husband is!”
Cheers and clapping sounded behind him. At the bar a girl in red striped T-shirt and no bra and a young man in white ducks were applauding. “Everyone should know where her husband is,” the girl called out.
The Cunningham Equations Page 14