The mind, however, can, and there was indeed some small place deep within Norman’s gibbering mind that was horrified by everything that was being done to him, something that strove to fight ecstasy.
But the thrill of horror outweighed the horror; that small portion of his mind was like a single ensign in a battleship full of mutineers, trapped in the paint locker.
Then the first probe reached his medial forebrain bundle, and it was as if all the ecstasy clicked into focus for the first time. This was perfection, this was Nirvana. He orgasmed a third time. As an ejaculation it was insignificant, but subjectively it was the fiery birth of the macrocosmic universe; his consciousness fled at lightspeed in all directions at once.
From now on, his body would have an instinctive, mindless revulsion for ecstasy.
It was several hours before Jacques required him to be conscious. Bliss gave way to pleasure, then to simple euphoria and a dreamy, slow awareness of his surroundings. What a nice dream that had been. And how nice to find Jacques here upon awakening. It was going to be a fine day.
“Hi, Jacques.”
“Hello. Listen to me. I must engage your subconscious mind as well, so listen to me. If you evade my questions, if you stop listening to my voice, I will take the pleasure away. Ah, I see that you understand. Good. Listen to my voice. What is your name?”
The ensign in the paint locker knew what would happen, watched hopelessly as it happened. Your magic carpet will perform flawlessly as long as you do not think of a blue camel. Norman Kent’s name leaped into his mind, in response to the question—and vanished.
It was not simply the name itself that vanished. With it went the associations and mnemonics keyed to it in his memory. Jokes from childhood about Superman, jokes from adolescence about the Norman Conquest, jokes from the jungle about the Norman DeInvasion. An old Simon Templar novel he had read many years ago, and remembered all his life because it featured a hero named Norman Kent, who laid down his life for his friends. Certain times when the speaking of his name had been a memorable event. The sight of his dogtags. The nameplate on the desk in his office at the University. His face in the mirror.
If you take a hologram of the word “love” and try to read a page of print through it, you will see only a blur. But if the word “love” is printed anywhere on that page, in any typeface, you will see a very bright light at that spot on the page. In much the same way, one of the finest computers in the world riffled through the “pages” of Norman Kent’s memory, scanning holographs with a reference standard consisting of the sound of his name. Each one that responded strongly was taken from him.
All this took place at computer speed. Without perceptible hesitation the man on the table answered honestly and happily, a puppy fetching a stick. “I don’t know.”
“Very good. What is your wife’s name?”
“I don’t know.”
“What were your parents’ names?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your sister’s name?”
“…”
“What is your occupation?”
“…I…”
“Where are we?”
“…”
“What is my name?”
“You are…”
“What did you do when you left the army?”
“…”
The questioning took several hours. It would be extremely difficult to pinpoint just where in there Norman Kent ceased to exist. But by the end of the interrogation he was unquestionably dead. As he had yearned to be since the long-gone jungle days. The prayer he had prayed so fervently then was retroactively answered at last: his memories now stopped there. The paint locker was empty.
He was happier than he had been in years.
He remained on that table, cocooned in ultimate peace, for an unmeasurable time, drifting in and out of sleep. Jacques visited him from time to time, always alone. As intelligence reports trickled in from Halifax and New York and Washington, Jacques would ask him additional questions, covering loopholes, sealing leaks. A microchip was wired into five of the ultrafine filaments that skewered his brain, and tucked up into a fissure in his skull. The whole assembly would escape detection by anything short of a very thorough CAT scan, and it would briefly scramble the recording circuits of his short-term and long-term memory systems if certain thoughts entered his mind. Any direct or associational clue that might help him deduce his former identity would trigger a (hiatus). Thoughtfully, Jacques had added a fail-safe: if someone else ever suggested to this man that he had once been called Norman Kent, the microchip would self-destruct, allowing him to consider the idea dispassionately without going into suspicious fits of paralysis.
The man on the table experienced all this through a haze of bliss. But his memory-recording circuitry was in “erase” mode; none of the experience was retained. His consciousness had a duration of perhaps four seconds total. He simply marinated in pleasure, for what seemed like forever. His body achieved orgasm every time it was capable. At the end of a week he developed a prepuce infection necessitating circumcision. He never knew it; it transpired in his sleep.
There came a time when he slept and did not wake. His dreams were confused and painful, but he could not wake. He dreamed of plugs being drawn from tight sockets in his head, phone-jack plugs and DIN plugs and little RCA phono plugs. He dreamed that a man without a face was stirring his brains with a spatula, as though they were scrambled eggs that must not stick to the pan. He dreamed that a woman with blonde hair was holding him by one hand over a harbor he could not recognize, from a bridge he could not name. He dreamed that a bear and a mouse were calling a name that he ought to recognize, but did not. He dreamed that he was in his mother’s womb, and refused to leave. He dreamed that he was a burglar, that a dry voice on audiotape was acquainting him with details of a burglar’s trade, and when he had mastered the lessons the voice began to teach him the rudiments of high-level computer programming.
None of these memories recorded in his conscious mind. They were groundwork only: they would give a false “echo” of familiarity when his conscious mind “relearned” them.
At some point in his sleep the ecstasy began to fade, so gradually that he never experienced a distinct “crash” state. Eventually it was completely gone. And completely forgotten.
He woke with a hell of a headache in a strange place—a very strange place.
“It’s good to see your eyes open,” said a man he did not know. “You’ve been out for a long time; for a while there I was sure you’d bought it. I got the son of a bitch, by the way.”
He knew his response was silly even as he said it. “What son of a bitch? It was a mine, a Bouncing Betty.”
Then his eyes took in the room around him and he knew that he was somehow no longer in Africa.
12
1999 Jacques led us through the woodshed into the house proper.
“Sit down,” he said, smiling warmly. “Can I offer you refreshment?”
“Nothing for me,” Karen said.
“Thank you. Coffee for me.”
“I have some twelve-year-old Irish whiskey—”
“Perhaps another time?”
That made his smile sharpen at the corners. “Well phrased. Please—make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be back in a moment.”
I was bemused by my host. He was unquestionably the man I had known as Fader Takhalous in New York. But his whole manner was different. He no longer had a Bronx accent. His speech was accentless now, newscaster’s English, but somehow he was unmistakably a European. The Fader had been a tired old cynic; this man was a vigorous fiftyish with sparkling eyes. He was, I could sense, smarter and faster than the man I had been subconsciously expecting to meet.
If he was leaving us alone in the room, there was no point in searching it. It was large enough to have two distinct groupings of furniture. The set to our left faced a splendid bay window, now opaqued. The second, to our right, faced a large stone fireplace in which a f
ire was crackling. To the left of the hearth was a powered chair, the equal of my own in New York; to the right was a small sofa facing the chair. Between them a much larger couch and a second powered chair faced the fireplace, but we never considered sitting there. To do so would present our backs to both the front door and the door by which Jacques had left the room. Karen took the sofa; I sat down in the chair and swiveled it to face the room. I noticed that she moved the sofa slightly before sitting on it. It was a good idea, but my chair was bolted down.
Jacques returned almost at once, with nothing in his hands but a remote terminal. A table followed him. At his direction it rolled itself up to the fireplace, between Karen and me, and knelt, like a New York bus, to coffee-table height.
“Slick,” I said. “How does it corner?”
He was surprised for a second. He had forgotten that the table was worthy of comment. He grinned then. “Poorly. But the mileage is good.”
The table contained coffee, cups, spoons, sugar, honey, and cream. The cream was at least twenty-percent butterfat. The honey was local. The sugar was unrefined. The cups were lightweight plastic, double-walled with vacuum between—they would keep coffee drinking temperature for half an hour. The coffeepot too was thermal. A trigger in its handle operated the pour spout; there was no way to make it disgorge all its contents at once. Into someone’s face, say. The cups had half-lids, open just enough to admit a spoon. You could pour out their contents, but not fling them. Jacques poured all three cups, adulterated his own to taste, and sat in the powered chair.
I sipped my own coffee. As I had expected, it was fresh brewed Blue Mountain, with just a trace of an excellent cinnamon. I usually take coffee black, but I added a little sugar.
Jacques waited politely for us to comment on the coffee.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“To judge me.”
“To judge—”
“—you?” Karen finished.
“Yes.”
“Guilty,” she said at once. “Die.”
Jacques smiled sadly. “I will require you to go through the formality of a trial first. An old American tradition: allowing the accused to speak his piece before you hang him.”
“Do you seriously suggest,” I asked, “that there can be any justification for the things you have done? That would persuade us?”
“It is precisely because I cannot answer that question that you are both still alive. Consider this question: How is the most powerful man in the world to know whether he is sane or not? For certain?”
It was a good question.
“Why would he care?” Karen asked.
That was another.
“That is a good question,” Jacques said. “I will give you an honest answer, and if it sounds melodramatic, I am sorry.” His voice changed. For the first time he sounded like the Fader I had known. “If I am mad, the human race has had it.”
“I am afraid,” I said slowly, “that I agree with you. But again, why should you care?”
He sighed. “All humans with enough imagination to understand that they will die have an intolerable problem. They must reconcile themselves to extinction, or else work at something larger than themselves, something that will survive them. Their children, most often. The identity relationship between parent and child is direct, demonstrable, basic. Some are imaginative enough to see that their children are as ephemeral as they themselves, as susceptible to chance destruction. So they transfer allegiance and identity to something more than human. To a nation, or a notion, or a religion, or a school of art.”
I was almost beginning to enjoy this. This was the Fader I knew. We’d had a dozen of these raps together. It was from him that I had picked up the habit of arguing in precise, formal language, like a lecturing professor. I found that it clarified thought.
Or had I picked it up from him? Apparently I had once been a professor.
“A few,” he went on, “a very few, are afflicted with the insight that all those things too are mortal. For these few there is no alternative but to love their entire species above all else, to love the idea of sentient life.” He paused and drank coffee. “I am thus accursed. I have thought it through. I will sacrifice anything to preserve the human race. Your lives. My life. Those I love. Anything. Nothing else that I know, not planets or stars or the universe itself, has as good a chance of living forever. It’s the only game in town.”
I let a few seconds of silence go by. “The argument has been made before,” I said. “The classic reply is, ‘Who appointed you preserver of the human race?’”
He nodded. “I call it random chance. My lover says it was God. You might split the difference and say, ‘Fate.’”
“You, in other words.”
The one time I had ever beaten him at chess, I saw him smile just like that. “Yes. I chose not to duck.”
“Standard answer. But if I understand you correctly, you doubt your fitness for the job?”
“That is correct.”
“Now that is something new.” I turned to Karen. “Which would you say is worse, honey? A confident megalomaniac, or an insecure one? Generally speaking, I mean?”
“Shut up, Joe. I’m starting to like his vibes. Listen, Jacques—I assume we’re formally introduced, yes?—if I understand you, you’re telling us that you did not seek the power you’ve got. It’s kind of something that happened to you?”
He looked sad. “I’d like to say yes, but that’s not strictly true. I…saw that the power would come into existence, would come to someone. Once I knew that, I was obligated. I fought the idea for almost a decade, hoping that someone else would emerge more worthy of the power. No one did, and my hand was forced. I live for the day I can put down the burden. But I took it voluntarily and wield it ruthlessly.”
“You know,” I said, “I’d like to believe that. I have always felt that the best candidate for a position of power should be the one who wants it least. But you have, however reluctantly, wielded that power for at least five years now—”
“More like ten.”
“—and what little I personally know of the accomplishments of your administration smells rancid. You have made money from the deaths of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of wireheads. Like my friend Karen. You have learned how to make involuntary wireheads, and used that ability to make sure it stays exclusively yours. You blew up a shock doc and his shop in New York, suborned the Patent Office—”
“You scooped out Joe’s brains, and put back the pieces that suited you,” Karen cut in. “You kidnapped his sister—”
“What did happen to her, Jacques?”
Karen saw my face. “Easy, Joe.”
“She is upstairs.”
I blinked.
“She was not certain whether or not she wished to meet you. I don’t believe she was certain that she even wished to monitor the video feed from this room. She was holding back tears when I left her.” He saw my expression and made that pained smile again. “She is the lover I mentioned, who thinks that God did this to me.”
I thought that over for a measureless time. “Why isn’t her opinion of your sanity good enough for you?”
“She loves me. You two hate me.”
“Huh.” I burned my tongue, having forgotten about the thermal cup. “Tell me something. That shock doc in New York—that was your doing, yes?”
“The bombing on the lower West Side? Yes. Pure chance you were passing by. But it was not luck that you were not hurt. My agent had orders to wait until he was certain there was no one else in the blast zone.”
That was true. “Okay. Now tell me: why a bombing? Wouldn’t it have been simpler and less risky to mindwipe him?”
He was shocked. “I have had to make my own rules. One of the most important is this: I never mindwipe a man if I can accomplish my purpose by merely killing him.”
I looked him square in the eye. “That is a very good answer.”
He relaxed and smiled. “For a moment I thought
you were serious. The thought that I might have so seriously misjudged you scared me badly.”
“Yeah. You know all about me. I want to know about you.”
He nodded. “And the most important things I say will be the ones I hadn’t planned to say. Keep prodding.”
“Why do you sell the wire?” Karen asked. She got out cigarettes and lighter, and he watched her hands carefully while replying.
“For cover, and for money.”
“Cover?”
“It gave me a plausible and legitimate reason for research into brain-reward, which is the key to memory—and it gave me a plausible and legitimate reason for keeping the results of that research secret.”
“With mindwipe, what do you need with money?” I asked.
“I have had mindwipe for a little over four years. It was very expensive. Projects now on the drawing boards will be so immensely expensive that I will need every little billion.”
“All right. We now know at least a smattering of your means. Next topic: What are the ends that you contend justify those means?”
He nodded. “Now we are getting somewhere. Let me refill your cup. This will take some time.” He busied himself with the pot. “I must start from the beginning.”
I accepted more coffee, and Karen took a cup. Maximum alertness here.
“I was born into the midst of planetary war. Literally the midst, for Switzerland is bounded by France, Germany, Austria, and Italy. It was the eye of the storm, and by the time I was old enough to truly understand the danger, it was past. When I was six, my father attempted to explain to me something of the significance of the atom bomb, which had just annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was a director of what was then Switzerland’s fourth largest banking firm, located in Basel. I’m sure he made an effort to soften the horror of it, he was not trying to scare me. But when I understood that one bomb had destroyed a city the size of Zurich, I was appalled. I had been taken there twice, and believed it to be the largest city on earth. But my father told me that the bomb meant the end of war. He said now the whole world would have to be as smart as Switzerland, would have to learn to live together in peace, because the weapons were now so terrible that it was too dangerous to start a fight. ‘What if they’re not?’ I asked. As smart as Switzerland.” He paused a moment in thought. “Strange. One of the things I admire the most about my country is that nothing is done without consensus. To raise taxes requires a national referendum and a constitutional amendment. We did not enfranchise women until I was thirty-two years old and my mother, a neurosurgeon, was dead. A coalition of major parties has ruled for nearly half a century, talking every issue to death before anything is done. And now I, a Swiss, am acting as unilaterally as any tyrant in history. On a scale that Genghis Khan could not have dreamed of.”
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