Mr Occam made a disgruntled noise.
“Come on man, take five,” said Mr Thomas. “You know I’m talking sense.”
Mr Occam hesitated and then, to Karel’s surprise and huge relief, he nodded. Returning the blade to the cabinet, he strode across the room, opened a door and went out, out into the mythical world which lay beyond these four white walls, its existence almost as hard to believe in now as that of the Kingdom of Heaven itself. The door slammed.
Ten minutes must have gone by already, Karel told himself. Just six times that and I’ll already have done one hour.
*
“Mr Occam’s got all kinds of nasty things in that cabinet there,” said Mr Thomas, returning to his seat and leaning forward to peer down concernedly into his prisoner’s face. “Knives, razors, pliers, even a blow torch. You know, like one of those little ones people use to make that crunchy caramel crust on a crème brulée? Nice in a kitchen but, man, it hurts when you use it like he does, with the vinegar splashed on afterwards and all. But I think those sort of things should be the very last resort. I’m not a sadist. Maybe I’m in the wrong job but I honestly don’t like causing pain.”
Karel, the fallen chessman in his sideways throne, said nothing. Of course he had heard of the good-cop bad-cop routine and he understood that a game was being played. But he desperately desperately wanted to keep the good will of the reasonable Mr Thomas and to keep the ruthless Mr Occam at bay.
“Actually,” said Mr Thomas, “Mr Occam isn’t a sadist either. You should see him with his grandchildren. He’s gentleness itself. But he’s an angry man, that’s the thing. His little brother was maimed by your people, you see. Bomb went off at the lab where he worked. Concrete beam fell on top of him. Legs mashed to a pulp. Had to have them both off at the hip. Girl beside him – nice girl, Gloria: as a matter of fact they were talking about getting married – she was decapitated by the blast. He was trapped in there for an hour and a half next to her headless corpse. Well, need I go on? Just imagine it was your little brother Mr Slade.”
Karel said nothing.
“He can’t stop thinking about it actually,” Mr Thomas said. “You wouldn’t believe how it eats him up.”
He got up with a sigh.
“Come on now, let’s get you upright. I really shouldn’t do this with my bad back, but I just can’t talk to a man in that position.”
With a grunt of effort he levered Karel and his throne back up, then returned to his own seat, puffed and red-faced.
“I know you people sincerely believe what you are doing is right,” he said. “I know you sincerely believe that what Mr Occam’s brother was doing was wrong. But, man, he was working on ways of duplicating human organs for transplants. He was only trying to help. You can see why Mr Occam is angry, can’t you? You can see why he feels entitled to hurt you. Your people didn’t seem to care much about his brother’s feelings after all.”
Karel still said nothing. Intellectually his position was that the SHG should feel no more and no less responsible for the individual tragedies that resulted from their operations than the bomber pilots who helped rid the world of Nazi death camps should feel responsible for the individual tragedies that befell German civilians in the cities they bombed. There would have been mashed legs there as well. There would have been many decapitated girlfriends. But he couldn’t say that without incriminating himself further. After all, his position was supposed to be that the SHG weren’t ‘his people’ at all.
“Yes. I can see why he’s angry,” he said. “I would be too in his place. But those laboratories, those technologies, they’re brewing up all kinds of horrors for the future. They’re blurring the boundaries between a human being and a thing. You don’t have to be a Christian to see that, surely? Without that distinction, there...”
He broke off.
“But I’m not going to change your mind here am I?”
Mr Thomas laughed pleasantly.
“I’m a public servant, Mr Slade. My opinions are neither here nor there.”
“How can you be a public servant if you don’t obey the law?”
“Ah, but those are the written laws you’re talking about Mr Slade, aren’t they? Laws for the daylight, laws for the public stage. You’ve got to bear in mind that every public stage also needs a behind-the-scenes, a backstage. There’s got to be a place where it can be a bit messy and untidy, and where it’s okay to leave the ropes and props and bits of scenery lying about. Do you know what I mean? The show’s the thing, the show’s what it’s all about – that’s indisputable – but it’s what goes on behind the scenes that keeps it all going.”
Mr Thomas stood up.
“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I leave you here to think for a little while? You think about what you could do to help us, and I’ll nip out and have a quick word with Mr Occam there, see if I can persuade him to cut you a little bit of slack.”
*
Fifteen minutes at least, thought Karel, sitting in the middle of the empty room. Get through three more times what I’ve done so far and that will be an hour ticked off already.
And it would only be another hour before Caroline realised he wasn’t on the plane. She’d know at once that something was wrong. She’d know to inform Matthew using the agreed code. Matthew would set the wheels moving to get everything in the SHG battened down in readiness for the coming storm, and Caroline meanwhile would do the worried wife routine, using all the formidable resources she possessed as a TV celebrity and famous beauty: phoning the TV stations and the international press, phoning lawyers and churches and civil rights groups, e-mailing the two million members of Christians for Human Integrity. Twenty-four hours? Who needed twenty-four hours? It would be a couple of hours at most before the light of day began to break through into Mr Thomas’s ‘behind-the-scenes’ and Messrs Occam and Thomas began to feel the heat.
It was worrying that they knew about Leon Schultz though. How had they found out? How did they know about Mr French and Mr Gray? What else did they already know?
The door opened. Mr Thomas came back in, followed by a sombre Mr Occam. They both sat down in their chairs in front of him. It was as if Karel was being interviewed for a job.
“We’ve decided to give you a bit of information,” said Mr Thomas. “Something we’ve been holding back from you. We think it may help you come to a conclusion.”
Mr Occam stood up, walked slowly over to Karel’s throne. Karel braced himself for another blow. But instead the sombre black man leant forward and placed his hands on the ends of the chair arms, so that his face and Karel’s were no more than a foot apart.
“You’re not Karel Slade,” he said, and for the first time he very faintly smiled.
His breath smelled of tobacco and peppermint and garlic.
“What do you mean I’m not Karel Slade? Of course I am!”
Instinctively Karel looked past the implacable Mr Occam to the accommodating Mr Thomas. But Mr Thomas made the regretful grimace of a person who reluctantly confirms bad news
“It’s very hard to take in I know,” he said, “but it’s true. You’re actually a copy of Karel Slade; you’re not Karel Slade himself. In fact the real Karel Slade knows nothing of you at all. He knows nothing of any of this.”
Mr Thomas paused like an experienced psychotherapist giving a client some space to process a difficult truth. Karel needed it. He was frozen in the sense that a computer can be frozen when so overloaded with tasks that it can’t proceed with any of them.
“Incidentally,” Mr Thomas said, “it’s actually a lot later in the day than you probably think it is. It’s actually early evening. The real Karel Slade got up at 6.30 this morning, caught his plane and is now back with his wife, Caroline. They’re at a restaurant with Caroline’s brother John and his new fiancée Sue. I believe the meal is in celebration of John and Sue’s engagement.”
“Not without me, they’re not. That was my idea.”
“It was actually Karel Slade’
s idea. You think it was your idea because your brain is an exact copy of Slade’s and contains all his memories and thoughts.”
“Oh come on,” said the man who still believed himself to be Karel Slade, “I can see you’re trying to disorientate me, but to suggest I’m some sort of clone is really absurd.”
“Not a clone,” said Mr Occam.
“No of course not,” said Mr Thomas. “That would be absurd. A cloned copy of you would take forty-eight years to grow – and even then it would only be a body copy of you. It wouldn’t have your memories. And it’s your memories that we’re after.”
He leaned closer.
“No, you’re not a clone, Mr Slade, you’re a field-induced copy. Last night when Karel Slade got into that hotel bed he didn’t know it but he was actually getting into a scanner. The precise imprint of his body on the surface of space-time was recorded, right down to the subatomic level. And then this imprint – this field – was reproduced by an Inducer in the mineral bath from which you eventually emerged. It’s a bit like dropping a crystal into a solution. It takes a bit of time, though, which was why we had to tinker with the clocks before we put you back in that fake-up of your hotel room and waited for you to wake up.”
Karel knew about the field induction process. Like artificial intelligence and genetically engineered babies, it was one of the things that Christians for Human Integrity and the SHG were both fiercely opposed to.
“But no one’s ever copied more than a few cells,” he said, “and the government declared a moratorium on the whole thing a year ago, pending the report of the Inter-House Committee on Ethics.”
Mr Thomas nodded.
“But we’re back to what we were talking about earlier, aren’t we? About the difference between the public stage and behind-the-scenes? There is a moratorium on field induction research and it’s perfectly appropriate in a civilised society that there should be, but behind-the-scenes has its own needs.”
“You mean you just went ahead with field-induction in secret?”
“Well we couldn’t pass up on a technology like that, could we? Not in all conscience. As you pointed out yourself at the beginning of this session, suspects have all kinds of rights – and properly so. They can’t be physically hurt. They’ve got to have a lawyer present. They can’t be held for more than a short period of time. It’s all very laudable. But we’ve got a responsibility to protect the public and if we can work with a copy of the suspect, none of those problems need apply. What’s more, if we do it right, the suspect and his associates need never even know that we’re onto them. Karel Slade for example has no idea you’re here and that you’re about to incriminate him and the entire leadership of the SHG by telling us everything he knows.”
“I am Karel Slade, and I’m not going to tell you anything about the SHG because I don’t know anything.”
“I know it’s hard to grasp. I know it’s just too much. But you’re not Karel Slade. It’s just that you have no other memories except for the ones that were copied from Karel Slade’s brain.”
“You’re a copy,” said Mr Occam bluntly. “Get used to it. A couple of hours ago we fished you out of the tank and dried you down with a towel. Two hours earlier you were a lump of meat. Two hours before that you were just soup.”
“Perhaps it would help to clarify things if we gave you another name,” said Mr Thomas. “Let’s call you… I don’t know… let’s call you Heinz.”
Mr Occam seemed to find this amusing.
“You always call them Heinz,” he complained. “You always call them Heinz or Campbell.”
“Not always,” protested Mr Thomas. “I sometimes call them Baxter.”
There was a TV set in the corner of the room. He strolled over to it and switched it on.
“Something I’d like to show you Heinz. We have one of our sleuths at the restaurant where Karel and his wife are dining at the moment. The Red Scallop. Only just opened this week, I understand…”
Karel – or Heinz – could see them on the screen: Caroline, John, Sue round the restaurant table… and Karel Slade, large and voluble, teasing his future brother-in-law about something or other while the women laughed.
“This is a fake,” he said, “you’ve done this with computer graphics.”
“What, since yesterday? It was only yesterday you phoned Caroline and suggested this restaurant, remember? Previously you had a table booked at the Beijing Emperor.”
“Somehow you’ve done it since yesterday.”
“Dear God, Heinz, we’re good but we’re not that good.”
“I’m not called Heinz, I’m Karel Slade. And that isn’t a live transmission. It’s a fake.”
“Okay, let’s test it,” said Mr Thomas. “What’s your cell phone number?”
Karel told him. Mr Thomas punched the number into his own phone and paused with his finger on the ‘call’ button.
On the screen John was replying to Karel’s banter. Caroline and Sue were watching Karel to see how he would react. They were smiling in anticipation. Karel could be a very funny man. They were looking forward to a laugh. Caroline’s hand was resting affectionately on his arm.
“Now you tell me when to push the button,” said Mr Thomas. “You choose the moment.”
In the restaurant Karel was acting the outraged innocent in response to whatever John had jokingly accused him of. They were all laughing now. The waiter had just arrived with the starters.
“Now,” said Karel-in-the-throne.
Mr Thomas pushed the button.
Karel-on-the-TV reacted at once. The smile faded to an irritated ‘What now?’ expression as he felt his jacket pockets for the ringing phone. When Mr Thomas hung up, Karel-on-the-TV examined his phone to see who the call had come from, shrugged, replaced it in his pocket and, muttering something to Caroline in passing, turned his attention first back to the others and then to the generous plate of seafood in front of him.
Karel-in-the-throne shrugged, as far as a man can shrug when his arms are shackled.
“You could do all that with computers. You could easily do all that.”
Mr Thomas smiled.
“Okay, demonstration number two coming up.”
He took out of his pocket a device like a TV remote controller and pointed it at Karel’s throne, which rose about an inch as small wheels emerged from the bottom of each leg. Mr Thomas and Mr Occam got up from their own seats. Then, with Mr Thomas leading the way, Mr Occam pushed Karel back through into the room where he had woken up, as if he was some elderly invalid in a wheelchair.
It seemed incredible to Karel now that he hadn’t realised at once when he woke up that the alleged hotel room was simply a crude stage set. The walls were plywood panels, in some places not even properly screwed back onto the frame. There was a blank white screen outside the window where there was supposed to be a view of the city. But you see what you expect to see.
Only the sense of smell, it seemed, was not so easy to fool. All that had troubled him on waking had been that plasticky, slightly disinfectant smell.
However it wasn’t the room that Messrs Occam and Thomas wanted to show him. Using his remote, Mr Thomas unlocked the bathroom door and they passed through. Of course there was no bathroom. In fact what lay beyond wasn’t so much a room at all as a hangar or a factory floor. Its dull metallic walls rose to the height of two ordinary rooms and it was the length and width of a soccer pitch. Down the centre of it was a row of five large ovoid objects lying lengthways, each about three metres long and two metres high. They were complex structures, made predominantly of metal. A thick mass of cables – red, green, black, blue, yellow, multi-coloured – fed into plugs across their surface and trailed back across the floor to a bank of monitors against the wall. There was an ozone smell and a soft electrical humming.
“In case you’re wondering, Heinz,” said Mr Thomas. “These giant Easter eggs are Field Inducers.”
They approached the nearest inducer and Mr Thomas pressed a button o
n its surface to make a segment of the egg slide upwards to create an opening. Inside, beautifully illuminated by lights both above and within it, was a bath of clear liquid. It smelt of iron, like blood. Karel could feel the warmth of it in his face.
“So you’re trying to say you grew me in there?”
“You don’t in a Field Inducer,” said Mr Thomas. “You grow things assemble them. Field induction isn’t a biological process. It’s a physical one. Think of making a recording of a sound. You don’t try and reproduce the same conditions that led up to the sound being produced in the first place, do you? You by-pass all that. You construct a device that can copy the sound waves themselves.”
“But yeah,” said Mr Occam. “That’s what we fished you out of. When you’d got a face, that is, when you’d got past the stage of just being a big clot of blood. We fished you out, put you on the recovery table and got you going with a jolt of current. Then we gave you a shot to put you to sleep for a bit and took you through to the bed.”
Mr Thomas nodded.
“So what we’re saying, Heinz, is that this is the soup can you came out of.”
Karel couldn’t help remembering his dream of drowning and of hands holding him down, but he managed a derisive snort.
“It’s all a film set,” he said. “Like the hotel room.”
All of this was actually good, he tried to tell himself. It was good because it was taking up time. The longer he could keep Mr Thomas and Mr Occam busy with trying to prove he was a copy, the nearer he’d get to his twenty-four hour deadline before having to face the challenge of physical pain.
“Hang on, Heinz, hang on,” laughed Mr Thomas, “we haven’t finished yet.”
Mr Occam pushed him forward to the second Field Inducer. Once again Mr Thomas touched a button. Once again a warm metallic smell wafted out as the device opened up…
Then Karel gasped. Suspended in the fluid, neither floating nor sinking, was a flayed human corpse.
“Dear God,” he whispered. “What have you done?”
“bothers you does it?” growled Mr Occam. “You should have seen my brother’s girlfriend after you lot blew her head off.”That thing
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