“But why the secrecy?” I said. “Surely you’d find plenty of parents willing to enroll their kids in such a program.”
“KannerMax is still highly experimental. We can’t predict whether those who undergo the treatment will emerge as geniuses or idiots. Results point to the first outcome, with a large percentage of certainty, but still... If parents were to enroll their young children who can’t decide for themselves, and the lives of these children were ruined, the parents would recriminate themselves endlessly. Better for one man to shoulder that responsibility, I thought.”
P.J. and I contemplated this for a while. Zarthar seemed sincere, and his dreams had merit. But there remained one obstacle to our endorsement of his plan.
“Dr. Hornbine--” I began.
“Committed suicide. A self-administered dose of potassium chloride stopped his heart. You can see him inject it here.”
Zarthar activated a monitor, and an obvious spy-ray recording, time-and-date-stamped with the GDM logo, showed Dr. Hornbine alone in his office. He tied off his arm with surgical tubing to raise a vein, picked up a hypodermic--
“No, stop it!” P.J. yelled.
Zarthar flicked off the recording. P.J. sobbed loudly for a time, and when she had finished, Zarthar spoke.
“After contacting me, your father was so despondent that KannerMax would not work on adults--that he himself would be deprived of its benefits--that he chose not to live in a world where he would soon be Darwinically superseded. And this is another reason for secrecy. So as not to instill a similar mass despondency in the population. Let everyone think that these bright new stars are random mutations. It’s more merciful that way.”
I had come here ready to bring Zarthar down in the media with a public shaming. But now I found myself ready to enlist in his cause. I looked to P.J., who raised her red-rimmed eyes to mine, and saw that she felt the same.
And then I knew that our children would rule the sevagram.
Chicago:--Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Jon Courtenay Grimwood has won the British Science Fiction Association Award, and been short-listed for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the August Derleth Award. And it is my assertion that anybody and everybody who enjoys fusions of science fiction and mystery should read his brilliant San Francisco novel, 9Tail Fox, and then work their way through his backlist. Many of Jon’s novels are set in “alternate futures,” future settings derived from a point of departure from somewhere in our shared past. For example, his Arabesk trilogy, Pashazade, Effendi, and Felaheen, is set in an Islamic Ottoman North Africa of the Twenty-First Century that branched from our history in 1915. As with many contributors to this anthology, I’ve wanted to work with him for some time, and I hope this is only the beginning.
It took Jack Cogan five days to hunt me down. I don’t know why because I was where anyone with half a brain would expect me to be. In my office. At the back table in Finnegan’s, drinking New York sours and watching some old film on screen. You know the kind; girl meets boy, boy gets killed, girl saves every cent to bring him back to life, boy goes off with someone else...
Finnegan had turned down the lights; instantly lowering the ceiling and sending the wall into shadow. The place smelt of cigar smoke, whiskey, and cologne. The way you would expect a Chicago speakeasy to smell.
The bar stools held memories of those who’d already left. Little Pete, who overflowed everything except a four-seater settee; a whore I knew from somewhere else; a couple of soldiers; and a man who spent half an hour watching me before glancing away when I held his stare.
He left shortly afterwards.
Maybe he had another appointment, and maybe pulling back my jacket to reveal a Colt .45 in my belt made him decide to leave me alone. That’s what I thought at the time. When Jack Cogan came blustering into Finnegan’s with his shoulders rolling and his belly jutting proudly, I knew the watcher was one of Jack’s sneaks.
“Take a seat,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Cogan. “I just did.”
Leaning forward, he let his jacket drop open.
“Sweet rig,” I said, looking at his double holster. “Where d’you get it. Wal-Mart?”
Jack Cogan scowled. “From Lucky himself.”
That was Lucky Luciano XI, unless it was Lucky Luciano X. They had a high attrition rate in that family. Since gang positions became hereditary, we’d seen some weird shit in this godforsaken city; like thirteen-year-old capos running whole districts and a seven-year-old pimp managing a stable of hookers without knowing what the punters were buying.
“You’re a hard man to find.”
“Can’t have been looking hard enough.”
Jack was broad and barrel-chested, running to fat. At the moment his chest was larger than his gut, but it was only a matter of time. He tipped his head to one side, inviting me to explain.
“It’s been a bad year. This is the only bar I’m not banned.” Glancing at the door, I noticed two plainclothes officers. They weren’t clients for sure. They owned all their own teeth, wore clean clothes, and were sober. One of those was possible, two at a stretch...
But all three?
“I’m touched,” I said. “You brought backup.”
Jack Cogan flushed.
You can probably tell, the police captain and I go way back. In fact, we go back so far that I can remember when he was thin and he can remember when I was rich, successful, and kept the key that wound his boss.
“Al...” he said, and his use of my first name killed my grin faster than a gun ever could. “I need to know. Where were you between two and three o’clock this morning?”
“Can’t remember.”
“Listen to me...”
“Mean it,” I said. “Had my memory wipe this morning. Last three days. Shit, I guess. Must have been, or I wouldn’t have bothered to wipe then.” Pulled an envelope from my pocket, then pushed it across.
You would think it was poisonous from the way Jack Cogan hesitated to touch it. Although it might have been the color, which was purple.
“Classy,” he said.
A young woman I couldn’t remember told me she didn’t want to see me again. She told me this in childlike writing with tear splotches crinkling the page. So I guess we’d gone from romance to break up in fewer than three days. Impressive, even by my standards.
“You’re in trouble.” Jack Cogan was saying.
“Guess I am,” I said. “If her brothers or father ever catch up with me.”
“No,” said Cogan. “I mean you’re in real trouble.”
“And you’re bringing me in?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Felt I owed you that.” The captain nodded at my screen. “Watched any news recently?” His sigh answered his own question. “Guess not, or you wouldn’t be sitting round here drinking those.”
Without asking, he leant over and flicked channels.
My face stared back at me. Only it was me as I might have been; if I were sober and my hair was clean and I’d bothered to shave any time in the last week. This version of me wore a pinstriped suit, with a fancy waistcoat and patent leather shoes. He was carrying a tommy gun, the traditional mark of a recognized gang boss. The gun looked old, but it wasn’t. Not really. My grandfather had it made the day he moved up from consigliore to capo.
“You might want to turn up the sound.”
I did as Jack suggested, and discovered what a bit of me already guessed. The other Al had checked out with a shot to his head.
“Professional,” said the presenter.
A thin woman came on to talk about Chicago traditions and that particular MO. She talked about stuff that hadn’t happened as well. Gut shots, blindings, slashes to the throat, tongues ripped out, testicles removed and sewn into the mouth; nothing everybody hadn’t heard three hundred times before.
Round here the bosses appointed the mayor, and they helped choose the governor, and the governor helps choose the President. It was the system tha
t had been in place since the President realized only the bosses could make prohibition stick, because only they had a cast-iron gold-plated reason for wanting it to stick. It was what made them rich.
“So,” said the presenter. “You’re saying this is capo a capo, right?”
The woman hesitated. “It’s what that particular MO would suggest, but there’s another rumor...”
“What’s all this got to do with me?” I demanded.
Something like sympathy showed in Jack Cogan’s eyes. “We need you down the station,” he said.
“We’ve got your fingerprints,” said the man. “Your DNA and your ugly face on tape. All you got, do is sign.” Picking up a rubber hose, he slashed me across my hip and grinned when pain forced its way between my teeth.
He and his companion had me naked and tied to a chair, with blood filling my mouth and three of my teeth shining like cheap ivory on the cell floor. I’d already watched myself limp down a corridor onscreen, slowly open a door, and slip through it. Exactly 180 seconds later came the sound of a shot; exactly 15 seconds after that I limped back through the door, shut it quietly behind me, and shuffled my way downstairs.
I came out of yesterday’s memory wipe with one knee broken. Don’t know how it happened any more than anything else that happened in those three days.
“You listening?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m listening.”
He hit me again anyway; swing the hose to make me listen harder. I knew him from my old life. While the other enforcer looked like the kid of someone I used to know. Probably was. As I said, all gang jobs are hereditary.
One point troubled me though. I’d expected Jack Cogan to do the dirty work and here I was with a couple of high-level enforcers doing it themselves. Made no sense. At least, not to me.
“Why not leave this to Jack?” I asked.
For a moment, I thought the two men were going to tell me they asked the questions. But the man with the rubber hose grabbed a chair, flipped it round, and straddled it, pushing his face close to mine. “Only three people it can be,” he said. “Freddy, Machine Gun, or you. Now my boss knows it’s not him. And Mickey’s boss knows it’s not him. So that just leaves you...”
Digging into his pocket, he extracted a pair of pliers, a switchblade, a lighter, and something that looked like cotton thread, and laid the first three on the table. In the time it took me to realize the fourth was not cotton; he’d wrapped it round my ear and tugged.
“Fuck...”
Then he reached for my other ear. “Come on Al,” he said. It was a day for people calling me by my first name. “You know how it goes. We slice off your ears. We sever your fingers. We crush your toes and then we crush your balls. Assuming you’re too stupid to have signed before then.”
The other enforcer snorted.
“So,” he said. “Agree to sign and we’ll get you a doctor. It’s late, we’re all tired, and we all know you’re going to confess eventually.”
The judge had a face like a sucked lemon or maybe he was constipated. Either way, he twisted his lips and shuffled in his seat; every moue of distaste and twitch of discomfort captured on camera. And there were a lot of cameras, journalists, and members of the public. The demand for seats for my trial had been so great the city had held a lottery.
Now, I’m sure there are prosecution lawyers who are polite, intelligent, quietly spoken, and understated. The small man who stalked out into the well of the court was not one of them. Glancing around him, Mr. Dalkin stopped when his eyes reached the jury box and he gazed at each juror sympathetically. I don’t know why he didn’t just confess, his expression said. I don’t know why you’re being put through this. And then he turned to me.
“Tell me,” he demanded. “Why you refused to take a lie detector test.”
“I didn’t.”
Mr. Dalkin rolled his eyes at the jury and turned to where I stood behind bulletproof glass. “Then why are the results of that test not entered with the court?”
I shrugged.
“You don’t have an answer?”
“I took the test,” I told him. “But the results prove nothing.”
“How is that possible?” he said. “How can they not show anything?”
“Because I had a memory wipe the morning of the murder.”
He grinned smugly and flicked his gaze toward the judge, to check that he was paying attention. He was, leaning forward to catch the prosecutor’s reply. “Are you telling me that’s a coincidence?” he said. “That you just happened to have a memory wipe that morning?”
I nodded.
“The defendant will answer the question,” the judge ordered.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s just coincidence.”
“And when was the last occasion you had a memory wipe before this?” The prosecutor demanded. He was smiling.
“Eight days earlier.”
That was true and the police had already checked. In the last five years I’d had seventy-three memory wipes. Jack Cogan made the bank double-check the figure, and when they told him it was correct, he went to the clinic himself to check this was true.
“But why?” Cogan had asked me.
“Because I get bored.”
“And memory wipes stop you getting bored?”
“No,” I said. “They stop me remembering what I’m bored about.”
He’d sighed, offered me a coffee, and muttered that he was sorry. We both knew what he meant. Jack Cogan was sorry he had to hand me over to the enforcers. He was sorry he couldn’t fix the jury. He was sorry he couldn’t have the machine guns that would kill me loaded with blanks and give me an exploding vest.
It wouldn’t be the first time that happened.
When Mr. Dalkin kept pushing the memory wipe angle, I told him how many I’d had in the last five years and suggested he confirm this with the police. He decided to move on to other things after that.
“What you’re going to see,” he told the jury, “is horrific. If I could spare you this, I would. If the man in the dock had any decency...” The little man paused to glare at me. “He would spare you having to see this by pleading guilty. But then, if he had any decency he wouldn’t have done what you’re about to see.”
The lights went down, the shutters were closed, and a screen on a sidewall began to flicker and then clear as the clerk of the court played back the house security tape from that night. At first none of us could see anything. We were looking at the wrought-iron gates to a mansion and we were looking at them from inside. From a camera just above the front door to judge from the angle of the picture onscreen.
I hadn’t seen this section of tape before. I’d seen shots of the body, close-ups of the bullet wound meant to make me confess out of horror for what I had done. But everything I’d seen began with the corridor outside the boss’s study. This was outside the house itself, and at the moment the killer was a shadow outside the gate.
He limped up to the gate, slapped his hand on the lock, and blinked as a flash of light read his palm and lit up his face. A hundred people, maybe a hundred and fifty filled the court, and all of them turned to stare at me.
A click announced the gate had unlocked and a shuffle of gravel could be heard as the killer made his way toward the front steps. An automated machine gun bolted to a gatepost followed him and a tiny gun satellite dropped into view, skimmed once around his head, and then slipped away.
As the killer approached the front door, it clicked open for him. “Welcome,” said the house AI.
The killer nodded absentmindedly.
In the light from the hallway, his face could be seen more clearly than ever. It was my face. His hair was dirty and his face unshaven.
A tatty overcoat hid a Colt .45 in a shoulder holster that became visible as he turned toward the stairs and his coat swung open slightly.
He checked his watch.
And the entire court glanced at my wrist. I wondered why the guards had given me back my Omega before
letting me into court, and now I knew. The heavy black ring around its dial and the fat metal links of its strap were unmistakable.
He took the steps clumsily, obviously troubled by his bad leg. All the same, he knew where he was going and that, in itself, was significant. On the landing, he looked once in a mirror to adjust his hair, brushing it out of his eyes. Then he pulled the Colt from its holster and dropped out the clip, checked it was fully loaded, and slipped it back, flicking the safety catch and jacking the slide.
After which, he extracted a silencer from his side pocket and began to screw it onto the muzzle of the gun. Something made him change his mind, because he shrugged, in exactly the way I’d shrug, unscrewed the silencer, and dropped it back into his pocket. A few seconds later he was approaching the study door.
As we watched, the screen froze.
“What did you say to him?” demanded the prosecutor. “In those three minutes when he was staring death in the face. Did you mock him? Tell him he had it coming?”
“It wasn’t me.”
But I knew all the things I would have wanted to say.
In the old days when you talked to yourself it was inside your own head. These days...? One of me was dead, the other stood here. I had no idea who the third man was because I’d only ever had myself cloned once and look at the trouble that got me into.
At a nod from Mr. Dalkin, the screen came back to life and I watched myself step out of the door and shut it behind me. I was smiling. It was a self-satisfied smile.
“Notice the complete lack of remorse,” he demanded, turning to the jury. Obediently, they did exactly as told. A bunch of sheep the lot of them, although I was the lamb to their slaughter.
Whatever glamour my own attorney once had was reduced to a tired-looking flower in her buttonhole. The rest of her was a washed-out ghost in a cheap black dress. She was court appointed, which tells you all you need to know. And the entire court--including the judge—had decided that I was guilty as sin long before she even stood up to defend the indefensible.
When I smiled at her, she looked away.
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