Sergio ran while they were still skidding. He got in, breathing heavily as he pushed Gordon against Blaise. He opened his revolver and brass scattered over the front seat. “Let’s move it,” he said, and began reloading.
They went up the freeway ramp at eighty. Wind through the hole in the windshield made Blaise’s eyes water. Headlights followed them and stayed in the mirror, getting bigger and brighter with each mile.
“What do I do, Sergio? Somebody is faster or a better driver.” Blaise had to shout over the shriek of incoming air.
“Keep going!” The mirror was blocked while Sergio climbed into the backseat. He knelt facing rearward, both hands straining to steady the Magnum. “Slow down,” he shouted, voice tinny in the rushing wind. “Use the hand brake.”
Blaise shifted to neutral and pulled the brake handle for a slowdown unsignaled by stop lights. The Buick shuddered but continued tracking. Fast-closing headlights filled the mirror. The concussion of the Magnum left Blaise’s ears ringing. And repeated four times as Sergio spaced his shots.
Blaise shifted to drive and floored the accelerator. Carcinogenic stenches of brake pads and smokeless powder dissipated in the wind.
They pulled off on Torrey Pines Road in the shadow of eucalyptus trees that shielded the frontage road like a giant’s hedge. Blaise knocked out the remnants of windshield and back glass with a jack handle.
He traded cars at Helen’s house, parking the Buick in the garage where its damage wouldn’t be noticed, and picked up his VW. Sergio looked at it with distaste.
“It’s a car, Sergio.”
“Barely.”
“Dr. Gordon Hill, Sergio Paoli,” Blaise said.
“We’ve met.” Sergio didn’t say where, nor did Gordon.
Blaise was abruptly out of small talk. The drive back to the rented house and Helen was silent.
The consequences of increased intelligence are beyond the scope of the mathematics. Issues of religion, law. politics, morality, and even the fabric of life itself will have to be addressed in some other arena. We must acknowledge their existence, but leave the solutions to others.
FROM A SEMINAR ON
THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS
CHAPTER 27
Parking the VW in the driveway, Blaise experienced an emotion he had never known. Possessiveness. The night air reeked with ocean smells, lilac, magnolia, honeysuckle, and jasmine. He was reluctant to open the door. They stood until Sergio leaned past him and turned the knob. “Don’t want to wake Helen, do we?” he said conversationally.
Gordon kept his thoughts to himself, confirming Blaise’s sense that he was among cautious men. Uncertainty enveloped him, a moment of deja vu he had not experienced since just after the death of his parents. Since then he’d concealed self-doubts with alcohol, but they still existed.
Blaise sleepwalked his way into a house subtly different because Helen was there. Without speaking, he continued through to the back bedroom. The table lamp cast a soft glow over the room warming Helen’s face with creamy light. She opened her eyes.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I wasn’t asleep. Just thinking—worrying. Shut the door.” Softly, Blaise closed it and sat on the edge of the bed. “Gordon and Sergio are here and we have things to discuss and decide. There’s a lot I have to talk to Gordon about.”
“About me?”
Blaise hesitated. “Partly.”
“You don’t want to tell me?”
Looking at Helen in bed, Blaise was reminded of young nuns dewy fresh with innocence, unsullied by the gritty contact with the world that hardens adults and makes them different.
“I won’t lie to you, Helen. We snatched Gordon because I don’t know the answers. I got you out of the hospital because Sergio thinks the people we’re dealing with would want to trade you for Gordon.”
“I read your note.” She touched his hand. “You didn’t have to say you loved me.”
Blaise was choked for air but he forced himself to bend and press his cheek against hers. “I do love you.”
He straightened and the pressure relieved itself somewhat but his stomach remained knotted and he felt giddy. “I’ve got to see Gordon now. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Her eyes followed him as he closed the door.
“How is Miss McIntyre?” Gordon asked.
“Better, but weak.”
“That’s good.” Examining Sergio and Blaise curiously, he said, “I take it then that you didn’t want me out of Heaven’s Gate just to prescribe for Miss McIntyre?”
“Gordon, could you have gotten away without help?”
“That’s a good question, Dr. Hill,” Sergio added. “I’d also like an answer.”
“I see.” Gordon settled back in the colonial wingback arid contemplated both men. “I got into the car, didn’t I?”
“That’s not the question, Gordon.”
“You’re asking, did I want out?”
“That’s right.”
Gordon picked small pieces of quartz from the soil in a potted plant and began positioning them with his left hand on the broad chair arm. “Leaving would have been difficult, but I could probably have managed.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You suspected when you called that my phone was monitored. And if it wasn’t, I was expected to tell my friends what you said in order to get rid of them while you snatched me from in front of the spa. You knew when you called, Blaise, that Mr. Paoli was going to be shot at either way.”
“Of course, Gordon. What worries Sergio is that you’ll contact West or Hemmett now that you know where we are.”
“You’re not worried?”
“I know you; Sergio doesn’t. You saw your wife, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“It’s personal, between Stella and me.” Irritation showed in Gordon’s voice.
“Of course it is, Dr. Hill.” Sergio sat in the shadow, his voice disembodied. “I’m cooperating with Dr. Cunningham because I believe our employers aren’t dealing with us in good faith.”
Gordon looked at Sergio with what could have been indifference, but said nothing, which Sergio took as an invitation to continue. “Dr. Cunningham pointed out that nostri amici—our friends—wanted to repossess a laboratory animal. They wanted the dog so intensely that men like my cousin Bruno and myself were used to get it back.
“It made me curious, Dr. Hill. GENRECT bought and paid for that pup. Doc here stole it. Why not just send the police?”
“What are you, exactly, Sergio?” Gordon’s face was as bland as his square rimless glasses.
“They don’t grant us degrees, Doctor. You might call me a producer. Like TV news crews—they got a guy puts things and people together and makes them all function. Somebody tells me what they want, I see it gets done.”
“Like murder?”
“Like whatever it takes, Dr. Hill.”
“What about this Bruno?”
“Bruno has his own interests to protect. Sometimes he does what I tell him and sometimes he does what he wants.” Sergio switched on a lamp and the sudden light was shocking. “You’re wondering if he kills people, the answer is not always—but he never does them any good.
“Doc here told me Dobie was the only laboratory animal you had left, and you gave him to Dr. Cunningham for safe-keeping. That’s curious, isn’t it, Doctor? I mean, you have all the test animals you want, considering that you’re treating humans by the gross. So what’s one dog more or less?”
Gordon looked ill.
Allowing him time to think, Sergio went into the kitchen and returned with orange juice and three glasses. He poured and passed them around. Handing one to Gordon, he said, “No anesthesia in this, Dr. Hill.” He raised his glass. “Salute.”
Gordon stared into his glass.
“Dr. Hill, I’m not a humanitarian.”
Lifting his head, Gordon examined Sergio at length. “You’ve had the process?”
Sergio nodded.
Gordon returned his gaze to the glass and Blaise knew the battle was over. “I think, at first,” Gordon began, “West feared word getting loose about what Human Enhancements really was. He was under pressure to start showing a return. But government red tape would tie up anything we did for lifetimes. Cancer researchers need years before the government lets them experiment on humans—even terminally ill humans who beg for anything. And we were not working on a cure for the terminally ill.
“When I started the experiment, I wanted to see if a superior animal’s cortex could learn to control the information potential implicit in a Tillie. It seemed promising. Ample evidence in cases of human brain damage indicates other parts can take over the damaged segment’s functions.
“Genetic manipulation was a dead end. The problem is communication. I could have modified the Tillie genes even more, but what could I change it to? The Tillies were already a solution seeking a problem. We needed a situation in which they could be used as is.
“I began to experiment, and I began to have some success.”
“You didn’t tell me, Gordon.” Blaise did not know whether he felt deceived or thankful that he had not known.
Gordon averted his eyes. “You were a . . . risk. Dr. Hemmett wanted to dump you, but I said I needed your computer expertise.” Gordon smiled weakly. “A small deceit for your survival.
“I knew I had something when I taught an annelid to remember. Earthworms didn’t last, though. The Tillies have a minimum normal mass and eventually the weight and bulk of the Tillie attached to the worm’s nervous system caused it to die.
“Insects didn’t work; the brain mass was too small, and the exoskeleton caused the developing Tillies to impact on themselves. So I went to mammals. And when the results became substantive, I told Dr. Hemmett.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Blaise. I had a discovery that would immortalize me. I didn’t want anybody else to get interested in the line of research I’d taken and”—Gordon shrugged helplessly—“I like you, but—”
“But I was a drunk and desperate and not somebody you could trust. You’d have been crazy to tell me, Gordon.”
“Dr. Hemmett brought Mr. West in. Against my objections, but GENRECT was in economic straits and, as I discovered, Mr. West’s job is to ensure a profit for Tenro’s backers.”
Sergio chuckled. “Did you learn who the backers are?” Gordon shook his head.
“You should have, Dr. Hill. There’s Angelo Scapoli and Joe Freedman, who used to be Hymie Liebenstein. Maxie Bloom, the dirty-movie king from Chicago. Arthur Lee Grant, he owns banks he milks to invest in things like GENRECT. And others.”
“They’re just names to me, Mr. Paoli.”
“With all respect, Doctor, you should be able to figure out that these are men who don’t like it when they are losing money.”
“Thanks,” Gordon said dryly. “That occurred to me without even knowing their names.”
“Gordon, we know what you did. We’re not blaming you. You saved Helen’s life. But I think, and Sergio thinks, that things have been going so smoothly because somebody is suppressing any evidence of contraindications. You’re part of the evidence. You could blow the whistle.”
Gordon let the sentence lie for a while before asking quietly, “Suppose I don’t tell you why I didn’t?”
“I don’t know, Gordon.” The weight of the pistol in his pocket made Blaise uncomfortable. “Helen is pretty weak still, so you can’t go back until we’re able to move her. West ordered me killed. Now they’ll want Sergio, too. What would you do?”
“I might lie.”
Blaise shrugged. “You don’t have much to lose, Gordon.”
“My privacy.”
Blaise said nothing. To rattle on about things they all knew was not going to produce a revelation, or a change of heart.
Finally Gordon held his hands up. “I didn’t like it,” he said, “but they offered me too much money. That’s the truth of it, Blaise. And there was the other problem.”
Slowly Gordon’s words began to penetrate. “You didn’t do it alone, did you, Gordon? I’ve seen your lab. You didn’t have the equipment or the time to do the actual gene modification.”
“That’s right.” Gordon swirled his orange juice. “Don’t you have anything stronger?”
“We’re all on the wagon, Doctor.” Sergio smiled at Gordon.
“Larval forms are all remarkably similar in physiology. The basic animal form is a worm with limited activity in the cortex. It is boneless. The muscles, vascular system, gastrointestinal tract are all as simple as the nervous system. Only in the advanced stages or in the pupa do larvae begin to develop those special characteristics that vary so in the adult form. Appending a larva to a worm or an insect was easy. But modifications were necessary for it to couple with a mammal.”
Blaise nodded. “I should have seen it. You jumped from worms to mammals. No reptiles, no amphibians, no birds. You reengineered the Tillies.”
Gordon tented his hands and rested his chin as if too tired to hold his head up. “If I’d let you know about the worms, and then progressed to rats and rabbits and finally Dobie, you’d have worked out what I was doing. I was afraid of that.”
“You thought I’d steal your work?”
“No. You’re not venal, Blaise. I was breaking a patent. We might even have lived with that. But I was using a lab tech at the TIL facility to do the work—much of it on company time.
“She supplied me with computer-mapped images which I analyzed and rebuilt as theoretical models. The recombinant DNA was more difficult, but she was good, very ingenious. She synthesized what we needed from altered bacterial strains.”
“Esther Tazy?”
Gordon looked surprised. “Yes. Miss Tazy.”
“Was anything she did of major innovative importance?”
“No. It was fine work. She was grossly underemployed. But her work was substantive, not innovative.”
“Esther Tazy is dead, Gordon.”
For a moment Gordon was mute. “A shame,” he said finally.
“Was she working for Hemmett?”
“He arranged our cooperation.” Gordon gave Blaise a questing look. “Perhaps you should be answering questions.”
“When I have the answers. I’m sorry, Gordon.”
“I know.” Gordon examined Sergio. “It wasn’t just the money. Without Miss Tazy’s help, without the license to do the research, I would have been denied recognition. Technically, my work would have been research piracy. When West and Dr. Hemmett told me they had a human volunteer, maybe I didn’t resist as much as I should have. The subject had terminal cancer and was being paid. He told me he needed money for his family.”
“And that’s it?” Sergio stood. “You started everything from that and then didn’t clear out because of the money?”
“No.” Blaise waved Sergio back into his chair. “Gordon has an implant, too. He started to worry when they took the lab animals away from him. Tell me, Gordon, when did they start grabbing the animals?”
“When you were in San Francisco. Miss Tazy called Dr. Hemmett and whatever they talked about—and I think it was you—the next thing that happened was moving me to Heaven’s Gate before you got back. By then Human Enhancements was underway.”
“Then Miss Tazy was done working on your modifications?”
“Months ago. We had a regular supply of modified Tillies at Heaven’s Gate. The supplier didn’t even know they’d been changed. Miss Tazy modified the procedure and since the owners had eliminated the genetic engineers, there was no one to tell.”
“Gordon, I think you’d better take a look at Dobie. He’s in the garage. Comatose.” Blaise rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. “I want to talk to Sergio. Take your time.”
“I trust you, Blaise.”
“It has nothing to do with you, Gordon. Just check Dobie.”
“If a machine has human intelligence, is it human?�
�
FROM A SEMINAR ON
THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS
CHAPTER 28
“Per che?” Shadows painted Sergio’s face a Harlequin mask of conflicting lights and darks. Blaise was beginning to understand Sergio’s use of language to present defense as a challenge. He was struggling to reconcile the violence needed to survive with the wish to sever himself from all the meanness.
“Sergio, I think Gordon’s going to have bad news.”
Sergio said nothing.
“The night before Esther was murdered I was there because I had something she wanted, a Nobel Prize. She felt my luck would wash off. She told me things because she had been waiting and working and scheming so long and finally they seemed in reach.
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand women, Sergio. Esther was working on a project for Dr. Hemmett. Why should she lie? But Gordon says her work was completed. Why should he lie?”
“Perhaps neither was lying.” Sergio held his open hand to the lamp’s heat, casting a sinister grid of bars across his face.
“Esther said it would give her career a big boost, and yet she had to conceal her discovery if she wanted to profit economically. She also hated one of the wheels at TIL.”
An idea suddenly made Blaise’s mouth dry.
“She modified the larva again?”
“It has to be.” The backs of Blaise’s hands itched as if he had been in poison oak. “Gordon says she was good enough to do something remarkable. And I don’t think she’d pass up the recognition, no matter how much money was involved.”
“She did on the work for Dr. Hill.”
“That was Gordon’s discovery. Not hers. But Esther might have kept a secret if more than money was involved. She loved having the last word, and getting even.” Recalling his last conversation with Esther, Blaise didn’t intend to repeat it. As Gordon said, privacy was the last refuge.
“What could she do, Doc? And who would she be getting even with, and for what?”
“How,” Blaise said, “is anything that might hurt Technological Intelligence Laboratories. Who is someone who’d lose money. Why could be anything from a sexual to a professional slight. Esther was sensitive.”
The Cunningham Equations Page 26