The Hercules Text

by Jack McDevitt

  “Maybe they don’t use electricity.”

  “Well, then, magnetism. Or gasoline. Or somebody turning a crank. Whatever it is, there should be some indication of how much to use.”

  “Unless it’s something you don’t measure.” It was a remark that Gambini repeated later to Harry, and Harry, for reasons he did not understand at the time, immediately thought of Father Rene Sunderland. “How about some good news?” continued Hakluyt, suggesting they retire into Gambini’s office.

  “Majeski wasn’t very likable,” said Gambini. “But I’ll miss him.”

  “He was all right,” Hakluyt said. “He did his job, and he didn’t make trouble for anybody. In the end, you probably can’t ask much more than that.”

  “What’s your good news?”

  Hakluyt removed his glasses and placed them on Gambini’s desk. The lenses were thick, mounted in steel frames. Hakluyt was physically so slight that he seemed somehow less substantial without the spectacles. “I’ve worn them all my life,” he said. “I’m nearsighted, and I had an astigmatism. My family has a long line of eye problems. They’re all myopic.” He smiled delicately, picked up a Webster’s, and held it over the glasses. “I got my first bifocals when I was eight.” He let the book drop. It smashed the spectacles flat.

  Gambini watched, mystified. “Cy,” he said, “what the hell are you doing?”

  Hakluyt swept the pieces casually into a wastebasket. “I don’t need them anymore.” He looked triumphantly at Gambini. “You know why we had all those vision problems?”

  “Genetic,” said Gambini.

  “Of course,” snapped Hakluyt. “But why? The repair mechanisms aren’t properly directed, that’s why. The equipment to put my eyes in decent order was always there. But the coding was incorrect. Ed, rewrite the coding and you wind up with 20-20 vision.”

  “Son of a bitch,” said Gambini, beginning to glow. “You’ve been able to do that?”

  “Yes! I can do some of it. I can do it for you, Ed, if you want. I can make your eyes twenty-one years old.” He took a deep breath. “I never knew what it was to see well. Even the glasses didn’t help much, really. I always felt as if I were looking at the world through smeared windows.

  “This morning, from my car, I watched a cardinal sitting on a branch out near the main gate. A few weeks ago, I’d have had trouble seeing the tree.”

  “And you can do the same for anyone?”

  “Yes,” he said. “For you. For anybody. All it takes is a little chemistry. And I’d need a blood sample.”

  Gambini sat down. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course not. I don’t know enough yet. But, Ed, I think this is only the beginning. You know how I did it? I sent bogus instructions to several billion cells. The sort of instructions my DNA should put out if it really cared about my welfare. I’ve still got a lot to learn, but I don’t think there’s anything we won’t be able to do—stop cancer, strengthen the heart, you name it.”

  “You mean, stop deterioration generally?”

  “Yes!” Hakluyt’s voice literally rang. It was the first time Gambini had seen him actually appear happy. “Ed, I’m not sure yet where all this will lead. But we’re going to come away with the means to cure epilepsy, Hodgkin’s, cataracts, you name it. It’s all there.”

  Gambini removed his glasses. He only used them for reading. He needed new ones, had for years, but he suspected that stronger lenses would weaken his eyes still more, and consequently he refused to return to an optometrist. It would be good to be rid of them. To be rid of the back that ached on damp mornings and the loose flesh around his waist and under his jaw. To be rid of the dark fear that came occasionally in the night when he woke suddenly aware of the beating of his heart.

  My God, what would such a thing not be worth? To be young again…“Does anyone else know?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Cy, what would happen to a man who stopped aging?”

  Hakluyt took a while to answer. “That’s a good question,” he said. “If we intervene in the scheduled breakdown of the body, other factors will probably come into play. There certainly would be psychological considerations. But as far as your physical welfare goes, if you don’t get betrayed by your DNA, and if you stay off the wrong airplane, it’s hard to see why you should die.”

  Gambini picked up a large paper clip and turned it over and over in his fingers. “Probably we should say nothing about this to anyone, Cy.”

  “Why?” asked Hakluyt, immediately suspicious.

  “Because we would have a very hard time if people stopped dying.”

  “Well, of course we’d need to establish controls and eventually make some adjustments.”

  “How do you think the White House would react if I reported this to them? You’ve seen the problems we’ve had because we released some Althean philosophical tracts. And the goddam energy story caused a stock market crash. What would this do?”

  “We should suggest the White House turn it over to the National Council for the Advancement of Science.”

  “Or the Boy Scouts of America.” Gambini laughed. “They’ll turn it over to nobody. It’s too dangerous. If people find out that something like this is around, God knows what would happen. I’ll tell you this much: if we give this to Hurley, we’ll wind up with a bunch of immortal politicians, and nobody’ll ever hear of the technique again.”

  “Then we should submit it ourselves to the NCAS and let them decide how to handle it.”

  “Cy, I don’t think we’re communicating. Rimford thought he’d found something so dangerous in the transmission that he destroyed both copies of one of the data sets.”

  “What did he find?”

  “A way to manufacture black holes.” Gambini let that sink in. “But that’s not in the same league at all with what you have. My God, Cy, imagine a world in which people stopped dying. Even for a little while. If they stop dying from natural causes, they’ll start dying from something else. Famine, probably. Or bullet holes.”

  “But the NCAS—”

  “No one can handle something like this. We’ve got to deal with it the same way Rimford dealt with his problem.”

  “No!” It was almost a cry of pain. “You can’t throw this away. Who the hell do you think you are to make that kind of decision?”

  Gambini’s forehead was damp. “I’m the only person in a position to do it. If it goes beyond this office, we’ll never contain it.” He stared for long moments at the wall. “We’ll talk about it,” he promised. “But in the meantime, no one’s to know.” He took a ledger out of his desk and consulted it. “You’ve been working with DS one-oh-one.”

  “Yes.”

  “Bring it here. Along with your notes and any other records you have on this.”

  Hakluyt’s eyes went very wide, and the blood drained from his face. He looked near tears. “You can’t do this,” he said.

  “I’m not doing anything right now except ensuring that nothing happens until I want it to.”

  Waves of pain and rage rolled through Hakluyt’s eyes. “You’re a madman,” he said. “You know, all I have to do is tell Rosenbloom or Carmichael what you’re doing and you’ll find yourself in a jail somewhere.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” said Gambini. “But I wish you’d stop a moment to consider the consequences. In any case, if I have to, I’ll destroy DS one-oh-one.” He held out his hand. “I’ll also need your library ID.”

  Hakluyt produced the plastic card, dropped it on the desk, and started for the door. “If anything happens to those discs,” he said, “I’ll kill you.”

  Gambini waited a few minutes, then went out to Hakluyt’s station, retrieved the laserdisc, gathered the microbiologist’s papers, and locked them in his filing cabinet.

  An hour later, he let himself into the storeroom at the library and signed out the duplicate DS101. With an armed guard at his side, he brought it back to the Hercules spaces and put it, too, in the cabinet. Then he resisted the temp
tation to destroy both and be done with it.

  MONITOR

  PRESIDENT WARNS SOVIETS OVER SOUTH AFRICA

  Rebels Strike Johannesburg

  Constellation Reported En Route

  MASSACHUSETTS FIRM HITS BIG TIME WITH ALTHEAN T-SHIRTS

  BASEBALL SEASON DELAYED BY STRIKE

  First Test of NOBF

  Fans’ Organization Threatens Boycott

  PROGRESS IN WAR ON CANCER

  Early Detection Remains Key

  “SIGNALS” OPENS IN WASHINGTON

  New Musical Salutes Altheans

  MATHEMATICIAN KILLED AT GODDARD

  Cord Majeski Dies in Gas Line Explosion

  WHITE HOUSE PREDICTS MARKET RECOVERY BY END OF YEAR

  President Points to Strong Housing Starts, Employment Figures

  KANSAS CITY STAR SAYS MISSILE SHIELD IMMINENT

  Pentagon Denies Reports

  AYADI ATTACKS HERCULES PROGRAM

  “Trafficking with Satan”

  Baghdad (AP)—In a statement issued today from his headquarters at Government House, the Ayadi Itana Mendolian branded the U.S. Hercules Project as either “a pack of lies” or a communication with Satan. In either case, he said, “a just God will surely reward the avengers.” This was widely seen as a call for action by terrorist groups known to be operating in Western Europe and the United States.

  BAINES RIMFORD ANNOUNCES RETIREMENT

  16

  HARRY’S ALLERGIES WERE growing worse. He went to the dispensary to see if he could get a stronger prescription, and a strange thing happened. While he waited, Emma Watkins, the attractive young receptionist who brightened the otherwise sterile sitting room, mentioned casually that she’d mailed off the copy of his medical record just an hour before. “To whom?” asked Harry, feeling as if he’d come in during the middle of the conversation.

  She hesitated, trying to remember, and pulled his file. “Dr. Wallis,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Dr. Adam Wallis.” She showed him a formal request, with Harry’s signature on an accompanying release. But it wasn’t his handwriting.

  “Who’s Adam Wallis?” he asked.

  “Don’t you know, Mr. Carmichael?” Her manner suggested that Harry was one of those high-ranking people who have a hard time keeping their minds on practical matters. “His stationery says he’s a GP.” She disappeared into the back of the room and returned with the Physicians’ Directory. “He’s not listed,” she said, after a few moments of page-turning.

  “Why would anyone be interested in my medical history?” asked Harry. He wondered whether it might be somehow connected with Julie. But how?

  The address on the stationery was in Langley Park. He drove over in the evening and found a two-story frame house in a new subdivision. Lights were on, and children were visible through the windows. The name on the mailbox was Shoemaker.

  “I never heard of him,” said the man who answered the door. He told Harry he’d been living there for eight years. “I don’t think there’s any doctors in the subdivision. The local ones are all over at the Medical Building.”

  Harry stood on the doorstep, puzzled. “You’ll probably get a package for him tomorrow, from Goddard.” Harry took out the Xerox copy of Wallis’s letter and compared the addresses again. He was at the right place. “I’d appreciate it if you’d just turn it around and send it back.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  Two days later, Harry’s medical record was back, marked “Return to Sender.”

  Leslie went back to her office in Philadelphia for three days each week. But routine work with patients who were having problems with kids or suffering from sexual dysfunction—those two complaints constituted about ninety percent of her practice—had become tiresome. Her attitude toward that aspect of her life’s work had, in fact, been deteriorating for two years. She’d been preparing to dissolve her practice before the call from Goddard had come the previous September. She knew now that she would never go back to full-time consulting with individual patients.

  But she had no idea what she would do. What would be left for her after Hercules? She’d been planning to conduct a study on the addictive effects of TV on various segments of the population. That such data would be enormously important she had no doubt. But how tiresome the gathering of it would be! How tiresome the rest of her life would be!

  One of her patients for some years had been Carl Wieczaki, a former Phillies infielder who had made the All-Star team at twenty-two in his second season, had gone to Portland two years later, and was out of baseball at twenty-six. He was a potbellied bartender when he came to Leslie, and she’d seen how terrible it is to achieve the peak of one’s life so young!

  The Wieczaki syndrome.

  She was susceptible to it herself.

  When the last appointment for the day cancelled, she decided to walk home. The weather had turned summery, and since she didn’t plan to go out that evening, leaving her car in the lot would be no inconvenience.

  She cut across the Villanova University campus, stopped at the bookstore to pick up a novel, and enjoyed an early dinner on City Line Avenue.

  There was a ball game at Mulhern Park, and she lingered to watch the last few innings.

  A couple of hundred people had turned out for the contest between two high school teams. It was, she learned, opening day, and the crowd was being treated to good pitching and defense on both sides. Leslie was particularly struck by the visitors’ center fielder, a tall, lean boy of exquisite grace. Although Leslie had played basketball in college, she’d never taken much interest in watching organized sports. They seemed to her a scandalous waste of valuable time. But on that warm evening, hobbled by the uncertainties in her life, she was anxious to lose herself for an hour or so in something harmless.

  It was hard to take her eyes off the center fielder. He pulled down several long drives, cut off an extra-base hit that should have rolled all the way to the cyclone fence bordering the field, and threw out a runner who tried to advance on an overthrow of second. She watched, after each inning, as he came in from his position. His eyes were blue and intelligent; he had a good smile; and once, when he looked up and saw her, he grinned and, just perceptibly, nodded.

  He was a lovely child, and she wished him a good life.

  He came to bat late in the game with two out and the score tied and lined the first pitch into the alley in left center. The hundred or so fans on the visitors’ side rose in unison, and the boy was off like a young leopard.

  With two outfielders in pursuit, the ball hit the base of the fence on the fly, and caromed high into the air. The shortstop hurried out to take the relay, while the runner rounded second and sprinted toward third. The fence was deep, and everyone realized he had a chance to go all the way. The left fielder caught up with the ball as the runner approached third. The coach was frantically waving him home.

  He cut the corner at the bag and raced down the final ninety feet.

  “Go, Jack!” the fans called.

  The execution by the defense was flawless. The outfielder fired a strike to the shortstop, who allowed it to go through. It bounced once and arrived, Leslie thought, simultaneously with the runner. But the catcher blocked off the plate and swept the tag across a leg as both players sprawled into the clay. The umpire’s right fist jerked up!

  In the bottom half of the inning, the home team scored on a pair of hits wrapped around an infield out, and the game was over.

  The center fielder helped his team collect bats and gloves. But when they headed for their bus, he lingered near the bench. At first Leslie thought he’d misunderstood her interest in him, but he never looked up at her. Rather, he stood quietly in the shadows, and she could see that final sprint around the infield replaying itself in his mind.

  She wished there were something in her own life that she wanted so badly.

  The Soviet Reconnaissance Satellite XK4415L, of the Chernev series, floated in geosynchronous orbit above the
Mojave Desert, where it could observe two U.S. Air Force bases and a missile tracking range.

  On the thirtieth of April, during the late morning, its infrared cameras picked up a series of six plumes, long streaks of white mist soaring toward the summit of the eastern sky. The satellite’s instruments identified them as MXs and tracked them out of the atmosphere. An array of electronic eyes and ears fed data into onboard computers, which compared performance against known capabilities. But well before the missiles arrived at their apexes, they went awry. All six wobbled off in unexpected directions, turned over, and fell back toward the surface.

  Several hours later, a second series of eight ICBMs staggered across the sensitive registers of the satellite. At a few minutes before midnight Moscow time, Colonel Mikos Zubaroff entered one of the numerous briefing rooms on the west side of the Kremlin, threw his bulging briefcase onto a flat wooden lectern, handed a filmstrip to an aide, and removed eight copies of the reconnaissance analysis from the briefcase. Each was in a red folder stamped with a supersensitive classification.

  Marshall Konig arrived moments later; he walked quickly to the front of the room and scrutinized Zubaroff. “It is true?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “They destroyed all fourteen?”

  “Yes.”

  He was silent. One by one the others entered, Yemelenko and Ivanovsky and Arkiemenov and the rest, grim men who understood the nature of the threat from the West and who were tonight, perhaps for the first time in their military careers, pessimistic about the nation’s future.

  Zubaroff waited until they were all seated around the green baize-covered table, and then he briefly recounted what the Chernev had observed. His aide projected slides taken a few seconds apart, which chillingly revealed the simultaneous loss of control in both flights of missiles.

  “Do they not,” asked Konig smoothly, “have the capability to blind the Chernev?”

  “Yes,” said Zubaroff. “We have no doubt they can do so.”