“It would have cost her.” Sergio had come wide awake. His objection was pro forma, seeking flaws in Blaise’s hypothesis.
Blaise shook his head. “Human Enhancements was already making a fortune for Tenro, West’s investment company, and GENRECT, a Tenro investment. Dr. Hemmett promised to hire Esther—otherwise, why keep her discovery secret? The problem of patent theft remained, but my guess is West had a scheme to buy the patent if TIL could be pushed over the edge. It would keep Esther quiet: with the patent in their hands she could announce her work as an employee of GENRECT.”
“You can check that,” Sergio said quietly. “West would have overpaid, perhaps as an advance for work to be done. Then the expected contract hangs up and TIL owes too much money due on demand. After that, a default clause is activated and West forces TIL into bankruptcy.”
“I thought you were studying languages.”
“I study the people I work for. Different languages don’t say different things.” Sergio breathed out. “You’re probably right. I’ll accept Dr. Hill’s opinion. But he’s been dealing voluntarily with West. Will he go back?”
“Maybe. He talked to his wife and then returned to Heaven’s Gate.” Blaise studied Sergio. “I brought him here after he inoculated Helen. He’s known about Dobie ever since.”
“West may have threatened his family.”
“He didn’t tell us that. He won’t talk about what his wife and he discussed.” Blaise shrugged. “Gordon came to some sort of personal understanding with Stella. I think it was a pessimsistic understanding.”
“Do we find out?”
“If he won’t tell us about Stella, I don’t think he’ll tell West about us.” Blaise held up his hand and Sergio stopped speaking. Gordon walked in, looking as if he was going to scream. He collapsed like clothes tumbling from a laundry chute.
Sergio unfolded from his chair in slow motion to help Blaise put Gordon on the couch. He stared at Blaise over Gordon’s recumbent body. “You go,” he said.
Blaise saw a shadow in Sergio’s eyes that might have been fear. He walked back the way Gordon had come.
The door to the garage gaped, spilling light into the house. Blaise sat on a small garbage can and leaned back against the wall. Dobie seemed so peaceful on his mattress, the soft lashes of his eyes closed, soft furry muzzle tucked on his front paws.
Very little blood was in evidence. Gordon had opened the skin above Dobie’s ear and removed a piece of skull to reveal the brain. Faint lines of blood marked the neat incisions.
Leaning, Blaise looked into the doberman’s skull. He had to breathe deeply as his eyes adjusted to the darker interior. When he had seen enough, he patted the dog’s warm flank and said, “Sorry, Dobie.” He turned the light out and closed the door.
Sergio wasn’t pacing, he just looked that way when Blaise entered the living room. “Get some ice, please,” Blaise said.
Almost gratefully, Sergio moved out of the room, retaining some of the immutable sense of calm that Blaise had become accustomed to. He came back with ice cubes in a towel. He also had a bottle of washing ammonia. When Blaise glanced at it he tried to smile. “It’s not smelling salts, but it might help.”
Blaise rubbed Gordon’s temples with the towel and passed the bottle under his nose.
“Shto?” Sergio said, then repeated himself in English. “What is it?”
“Shock. Acute anxiety reaction. How the hell should I know? Maybe a heart attack.” Blaise felt for the pulse in Gordon’s throat, the only one he was sure he could count. The throb seemed weak, but it was steady and anyway Blaise was not sure what normal meant.
Sergio reached over his shoulder and peeled back Gordon’s eyelid. “Not a heart attack.” Sergio started toward the garage.
“Don’t go!”
“Whatever it is, I think I can handle it, Doc.” Sergio tried to smile, but botched the attempt.
“You’d better be awfully sure.”
“I’m a good Catholic boy.” Sergio crossed himself. “The Pope protects me because I’m named for Saint Paul’s protector.”
Blaise examined Gordon. A touch of pink had invaded the pallor. “Do me a favor and be sure, Sergius Paulus.”
Sergio winked. “Remember what the old boys did to bearers of bad tidings.”
Gordon was starting to regain consciousness by the time Sergio returned. He sat and the blue wingback chair engulfed him as if he’d shrunk while he was gone.
Blaise kept his eyes focused on Gordon.
“You were right,” Sergio said. “I shouldn’t have looked.”
Blaise nodded with a warning glance toward the back bedroom. “As soon as Gordon comes around, if he says it’s okay, I’d like a little help. I want to bury Dobie.”
Closing his eyes, Sergio nodded.
Blaise wondered at the images in Sergio’s mind. He was afraid to close his eyes because he knew he would see Helen. Gordon, and Sergio, and Jonathan Peters—even Bruno!
“Did you ever think, Doc, maybe West had Esther Tazy killed because she could upset his apples if he disappointed her?”
“Yes,” Blaise said. “It occurred to me.”
Sergio subsided into silence. If he had other thoughts, he didn’t voice them, for which Blaise was quietly grateful.
Machine intelligence is linear in terms of time and effort. Therefore machine intelligence may be increased exclusively by size and speed of operation and development.
FROM A SEMINAR ON
THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS
CHAPTER 29
Bright, early sun through the window hurt Blaise’s eyes. He checked his watch and looked around. Sergio sat upright in the colonial wingback, watching Gordon on the couch but not really seeing him. Gordon didn’t move, but his color was better, indicating he had drifted into normal sleep during the night. Sergio’s eyes had sunk. He seemed aged, haggard to a degree Blaise would not have believed yesterday.
Sergio turned. “Should we wake him up?”
“How are you feeling?”
“Bad news won’t make me feel any worse.”
Blaise nodded and Sergio unkinked from the chair. He went into the kitchen and soon the odor of abused coffee beans wafted into the living room. Waiting until Sergio brought coffee, Blaise leaned over, shaking Gordon gently.
Gordon’s eyelids snapped open. His irises contracted into steely gray dots while he turned on the switches in his brain. Slowly his eyes dilated to normal size. He looked around at the room and the rose-and-leaf patterned wallpaper as if he’d never seen any of it. “I passed out?”
Blaise nodded.
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Only to you, Gordon.” Blaise handed him a cup of coffee.
“You looked?” Gordon sipped coffee while glancing over the rim of the cup, first at Blaise, then at Sergio.
Neither answered, but Gordon knew. He put the cup down, scratched his ear, fidgeted like a woman putting on makeup she didn’t need to attain a look she already had. It was not necessary. He seemed already to have regained his unflappability.
“I gather you want my professional opinion?”
Gordon had not expected any dissent. The pause was for his own benefit. “It’s obvious that the dog’s cerebrum has been replaced by something that looks much like a five- or six-ounce pupa of the order Diptera.” Gordon looked at Blaise. “Sawflies, for the graduates of computer science courses.” Nobody laughed.
“I want to bury Dobie. Do you need his body, or anything besides the specimen?”
“Bury it all, Blaise. Then Sergio and I can have a drink.”
Blaise stared. “That’s all? You’re not going to do anything? Test it?” A hollow roar like the thunder of a waterfall blasted through Blaise. He could not breathe, his thoughts had frozen in neutral.
“Test what?” Gordon’s laugh shrilled out of his normal baritone. “I know what it is: a genetically modified transitional stage in the life cycle of a fly. If I cut it up, I’ll probably find other abnorma
lities besides its excessive size, if you want a better sampling, there are thousands of bigger ones. I know. I invented them.” Gordon cradled his head in his hands.
“All of them, Gordon?”
“I’ve had suspicions for a long time. At first the tissue looked good, rapid reabsorption and regeneration, a normal cycle for cancer research specimens. But a changed cell structure occurred after a time.” Gordon straightened, moving his head as if a crick was binding his neck. “And then Dr. Hemmett destroyed all the test animals just before you came back from San Francisco. When the moved my lab.”
“You weren’t suspicious?”
“I gave you Dobie.” Gordon smiled. His lips were strained. “Dr. Hemmett said the animals were being tested by an independent agency. He gave me more animals to experiment with.”
“Not too swift, Dr. Hill.” Sergio’s calm was glacial, but a feel of imminent eruption hovered around him. The discussion seemed to exclude Blaise. He was listening for Helen, but his own opinions were not what Sergio and Gordon were going through.
“No,” Gordon admitted. “But I was in so far by then, I had to believe. There was no way to reverse the implants I’d already done. I had Dobie. I passed him to Blaise for safekeeping.”
“And kept on?”
“Yes.”
“I could kill you, Doctor. You know that?”
Gordon gazed at Sergio. He wouldn’t resist.
“Gordon,” Blaise said. “When did you do your own implant?”
“After I gave you Dobie.”
“After?” Sergio’s mouth formed the word he could not believe, but was unable to doubt. “That was rash of you.”
“I didn’t have any other research animals I could be sure of keeping to maturity, Mr. Paoli.” Gordon’s words were deceptively mild. He pushed his rimless glasses back up his nose.
Sergio watched Gordon with bemusement.
“Try it in Latin, Sergio. Mea culpa.” Despite dormant suspicions in Blaise’s mind, Gordon’s confession of self-mutilation was almost as big a shock to him as it was to Sergio. “Gordon,” he said, “you shouldn’t have done it.” Hearing his own words, Blaise recognized them as fatuous.
“What should I have done?”
Blaise shook his head and saw his reflection in a sideboard mirror, head oversized and globular because his pale hair made him appear bald. How could he presume to tell Gordon what he should have done? “I don’t know. But you can’t quit now.”
“No?”
“For the same reason you made a guinea pig of yourself. You owe the people who didn’t know what they were getting into. You can’t bail out and play dead—not if there’s any chance.”
“You’re wrong, Blaise.” Gordon had regained some of his vitality. “I don’t have to play dead, unless you plan on reincarnating me as Kafka’s insect.”
Blaise got up from his chair. “If everybody’s life is as cheap as yours, then why don’t you go tell Helen that?” They glared, locked by different but equally compelling emotions.
“Why don’t you see how Helen is, Blaise?” Sergio’s soothing voice broke the tension.
Helen sat up when he eased the door open. She smiled, patting the bed edge. She had changed to a blue nightgown.
“You’re beautiful in the mornings. Did you know that?” He gave Helen a gentle kiss. Helen blushed and covered her face with her hands, peeking at him over the tips of her fingers.
“Blue goes with your eyes.”
“You like it?”
“Yes.”
“Sit with me. You’ve been out there talking.”
“Have you been listening?”
“I don’t want to hear anything you don’t want to tell me.” Blaise sat on the edge of the bed. “That makes me responsible for your peace of mind, and other things.”
“It’s a power of attorney.”
“I wouldn’t trust an attorney with what you’re asking.” She held his hand. “Blaise, I traded a risk for a sure thing. Whatever happens, I profit.”
He put his arm around her and she buried her face against his shoulder, her breath warm and moist on his neck. Her breathing was in heavy gasps. Her back quivered and she held on with both hands. “I really love you, Blaise,” she whispered.
He wanted to say something but he couldn’t say the words. “I know.” She kissed him.
After a while, Blaise returned to the living room. Gordon and Sergio were gone. He lifted the chintz curtain over the front window. The yellow bug was in the driveway. The garage back door hung open and Dobie and the mattress were gone.
A jungle of plants filled the backyard within the confines of a six-foot redwood fence. Roses, birds of paradise, a leafy orange tree, a towering walnut, and an assortment of bedding flower plants filled the space.
Blaise walked across the yard to a pleasant spot that took the morning sun but would be shaded the rest of the day. Sergio and Gordon were replanting what looked like early tulips. Shovels leaned against the trunk of the walnut tree.
“Sorry about the flowers,” Sergio said as Blaise approached. “Soft earth.”
“It’s a nice spot.”
“I wouldn’t mind one like it.”
Gordon dusted his hands and picked up the shovels, leading the way back to the garage where he stood them in a corner. “Dobie was a good pup.”
It was an epitaph.
“Don’t let Miss McIntyre poke around in the freezer.” He nodded at the white chest against the back wall of the garage.
“Thanks, Gordon.”
“I haven’t done much to be thanked for.” He hesitated and Blaise waited. “It had to be the cancer patient. He led Dobie by months. They never told me he died. But he must have. And somebody else did the autopsy. Somebody they could trust.” No cracks showed in Gordon’s face. They were all in his soul.
Advancement of human intelligence is a hope for quantum leaps at any time and any stage of development.
FROM A SEMINAR ON
THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS
CHAPTER 30
Like an annoying fly, the blue helicopter snarled over the house, drowning out conversation a second time. Sergio pulled the curtain back to look but by then the machine was past the house.
“Tourist ride,” Blaise said. The interruptions of what Gordon was saying annoyed him. “Real estate people taking customers for an aerial view of their new neighborhood.”
“The VW is still in the driveway.”
Blaise glanced at Sergio.
“If that was me,” Sergio said in a voice most people use to talk to themselves, “I’d be after a white Buick with shattered front and back windows. But I might also look for an old VW.”
“It’s too late to move the car.”
“Unfortunately.” Sergio let the curtain fall and stepped away from the window. “I suggest you tell Miss McIntyre we’re going to move again.”
“We can’t. I can’t, anyway.” Blaise clenched his hands in his pockets. “We can’t get Alfie out of here in the VW.” Then we go without the computer. Do you agree, Dr. Hill?”
’m not sure what’s right.” Gordon looked up from the list he was printing in block letters with rounded corners. The letters were so precise a reader might have thought they resulted from some special printing process. “I believe Alfie will give us a constructive chance. Without it . . .” Gordon shrugged.
“That pilot flew too low.” Sergio sat and stretched his legs. The past few days had taken off whatever comfortable flesh he had, leaning him down to wiry muscle and a face of stretched skin over bone. “We can’t chance it.” His jacket hung open, showing the butt of his pistol.
“How about another way?” Blaise asked.
Sergio fondled the pistol. “Doc, we’re running out of alternatives. Dr. Hill and I could stay, though. It’ll probably be all the same to us.” He looked at Blaise with mournful eyes. “Maybe it would be best for Miss McIntyre, too.”
“He’s right, Blaise.” Gordon looked up from his notes, his face
smooth, composed as if none of what was happening touched him. “Time is a factor. Like age, we can’t escape it.”
Blaise stared steadily at Gordon. “When did you do the implant on Dobie?”
“Two days before the first human subject.”
“Then we have that time.” Saying it aloud did not make it any more believable. “How about it, Gordon?”
“It’s likely that the maturity cycle is unstoppable.”
“But you don’t know?”
“I’m not sure.”
“If Dobie started slipping a few weeks ago and finally came apart a couple of days ago, it follows that human subjects would be experiencing the same problems soon.” Gordon nodded.
“What’s the treatment, Gordon?”
“Cat scan, magnetic sectioning scan, brain wave readings and analysis. Possibly exploratory surgery . . .” Gordon swung his head to look at Sergio. “We haven’t heard anything.”
Silently Sergio unfolded the cabinet doors on the television and ran the electronic tuner around the stations until he found something that looked like a standup news commentator. Aside from floods in New Jersey and tornados through Brownsville, Texas, and southern Illinois nothing unusual seemed to capture his attention. Sergio lowered the sound but left the set on.
“Either nothing is happening, or it’s being covered up.”
The sky was brilliant blue. Not a day for morbid subjects. “It’s being covered up,” Gordon said.
“You’re sure?”
Gordon chewed a squared-off thumbnail. “Reasonably sure.”
“Then somebody out there is going to be anxious to talk to us, wouldn’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t hurry to talk to them.” Sergio spoke slowly, with the deliberation of a thought-out statement.
“Not you, Sergio. Me.”
“Anybody important enough will have a tracer on his phone already. Everything considered, we don’t want to be the first ones picked up and in jail.” Sergio put his hands in his pockets and went back to the window.
“I’ll try to avoid that.”
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