Time Bomb And Zahndry Others

by Timothy Zahn

  But this is wrong. I must work now.

  I reach out to the work moving in front of me. Inside the cold boxes is something which has another kind of movement/flow. I touch it as I know to do, encouraging the flow and making it faster. There is deep satisfaction in this, and I wonder why I stopped to try and understand the new sight I had discovered. Perhaps "wrong" means to do what is not enjoyable.

  And then I see something I had not noticed before. One of the movement/flows in my work feels like the movement/flow in the box near me!

  Once again my work slows and then stops as I look at the box. No, I was not wrong. But there are many differences I do not understand. The work and its movement/flow move along a path in front of me, but the box remains still. Where then does its movement/flow go?

  I am curious. Reaching to the box, I begin to follow the movement/flow away from it.

  —

  The numbers on the screen bounced up and down gently, like a yo-yo in honey, before finally settling down once again to show nothing but ordinary radiation levels.

  "Almost had it," Project Recovery Director Norm Kincaid muttered, glancing down at O'Brian. "What did you do?"

  "Just now? Nothin'."

  "Hmm." Kincaid nodded and stepped back from the control panel to where Forester was standing. "You said you already tried an RNA booster?" he asked the operations chief.

  "Double dose. Twenty-Seven just doesn't seem to want to work today."

  "He doesn't 'want' anything," Kincaid reminded him quietly, with the barest edge to his voice. "They're vegetables, Ted; tools to help solve one of the umpteen critical messes we've gotten ourselves into. You start seeing them as human beings and you'll lose all sense of perspective."

  The pro-abortion philosophy of a generation ago, Forester thought bitterly. How far that argument had spread!

  Kincaid looked back at the monitor, rubbing his chin. Twenty-Seven's eyes, Forester noted, were closed again. "I don't know," the Director mused. "Maybe we should go ahead and move in a new unit. This isn't the first trouble we've had with him, but a good dose of memory RNA always got him back on the track before. Maybe there's some metabolic flaw developing."

  Forester's short, bark-like laugh escaped before he could stop it. Metabolic flaw, indeed! All the Spoonbenders were were masses of metabolic and physiological problems, thanks to the gene-manipulation techniques that had produced them.

  "What was that?" Kincaid asked sharply.

  "I was about to suggest we let Dr. Barenburg do some studies before we take any drastic action."

  "Uh-huh. Have you seen the backlog outside? Half the nuclear plants on the Eastern seaboard have started funneling their waste to us for deactivation, and Washington would dearly like to open that up in the next ten years to everything this side of the Mississippi. Having even one Spoonbender out of commission just slows things up and affects our efficiency. Look, if it'll make you feel better, we don't have to terminate right away. We've got two or three in the tanks that are almost ready; we'll have one of them just sub for him while Barenburg looks him over. Maybe it'll be something simple and he can go back on line."

  "You don't really believe that," Forester said evenly. "You're just proposing a two-stage termination."

  "Forester—" Kincaid began, but was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps at the door.

  "Here I am," Dr. Barenburg announced, weaving just slightly as he gripped the doorjamb.

  "Oh, hell," Kincaid muttered. "Drunk again."

  Forester looked away in obscure embarrassment as Barenburg clumped in... and was thus the only one who saw the spasm of emotion flicker across Twenty-Seven's deformed face.

  —

  TERROR!

  I jerk back, sliding my touch back along the movement/flow as quickly as possible. I somehow know that I could withdraw faster if I let go, but I am too afraid to do so. But finally I am back.

  For a long time I am too frightened even to try and think. I long to curl myself up, but I cannot do so with the pressures on me. My work remains untouched, but I do not care.

  Gradually, the terror lessens, leaving me strangely weak but able to try and understand what happened. I remember that I found one end of the movement/flow, a box inside which the movement/flow merged with a bewildering group of others. I continued on, and entered a large empty space. It frightened me at first—so much emptiness!—but without knowing why I moved on, seeking for something to touch.

  And then I touched it.

  Even now I cannot begin to understand what that was. I had been unable to follow my movement/flow through the box I found; this was many, many times worse. Most frightening of all was that I could feel... something... familiar about it.

  No more, I decide. I will stay here and do the work I was meant to do. I begin again to encourage the movement/flow in the cold boxes, waiting eagerly for the deep satisfaction to come.

  But another surprise—it does not. Not the way it once did. Once more something has changed.

  There is no fear with this change, for I think I understand. I have seen many new things since becoming aware, and I wish to understand all of them. But I do not, and the satisfaction of my work is no longer enough. Is this what being aware means, never to be satisfied? If so, I do not think I want to remain like this.

  But perhaps I have no choice. Even as I try to do my work, I also find myself reaching along the movement/flow again. I will be careful, for I am still afraid... but the urge to discover is as strong as the urge to work. This is something I must do.

  —

  "There it is again—first up, then down," Kincaid said, his gaze on the radiation detectors. "I'd be a lot happier if he'd just quit altogether."

  "It would certainly make things easier on us," Dr. Barenburg said dryly as he hunched over the control panel, his nose six inches from the bio data display. He seemed to have sobered up somewhat in the last few minutes, Forester thought. But then, maybe it was just harder to stagger sitting down.

  Barenburg leaned back in the chair, shaking his head. "Can't see what it might be. His nutrient mixture's fine and his oxygen content's at the prescribed level. Metabolism is up a bit, but within the normal range. Most importantly, I guess, is that nothing here shows the same fluctuation that we're getting in his telekinetic functions."

  "You think he could be losing it entirely?" Kincaid asked, looking worried.

  Barenburg shrugged. "I can't tell without further tests." He turned to Forester. "Ted, you said you saw his eyes open at one point. Did they seem to be focused on anything?"

  It was Forester's turn to shrug. "I don't know. With the slant and epicanthic folds it's awfully hard to tell."

  "Did they move around at all, or just look straight ahead?"

  "Moved; I specifically remember him looking left at one point."

  "Hmm." Barenburg looked thoughtful... and a little apprehensive.

  Kincaid noticed it. "What do you think it means?"

  "Well... it sounds very much like he's being distracted from his job."

  "That's impossible," Kincaid said, a hair too quickly. "The Spoonbenders couldn't muster an IQ of 10 among them. What could possibly hold their attention when their every instinct is to yank neutrons out of radioactive nuclei?"

  "The coded RNA is not as strong as an instinct," Barenburg pointed out. "And as for distractions, who knows? It's not like Spoonbender Twenty-Seven is completely confined to Cubicle Twenty-Seven. With telekinetic touch-and-grab he can reach into the next cubicle or examine the conveyer that moves the nuclear waste around. True, he's not strong enough to actually do much, but who knows how far his sense can reach?"

  Kincaid glanced sideways at Forester. "Even if I grant you all that, there's still the low IQ and the lower attention span."

  "Maybe his IQ's been improved," Forester suggested.

  This time they both looked at him. "How?" Kincaid asked.

  "A lot of highly radioactive material has passed over him the last eighteen months," F
orester said. "I know there's a lead wall between it and the Spoonbenders, but isn't it possible the radiation that got through altered his brain somehow?"

  "And made him smarter?" Kincaid shook his head. "No way."

  Forester bristled. "Why not?"

  "Do you fix a watch by hitting it with a hammer?" Barenburg interjected.

  "No, but—"

  "Look, Ted, what do you know about Spoonbender physiology?" the doctor asked. "Anything?"

  Forester shrugged. "They were test tube grown from sperm samples taken right after Red Staley won the Smithsonian Triple-P." Soon afterwards, anyway; for a man scornfully labeled a pretentious "spoonbender" to actually win the Provable Psychic Phenomena prize was comparable to Jesse Owens's performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the press had had a field day with the story. No one else had been able to get near Staley for days. "You enhanced Staley's natural TK by doubling the proper chromosome, giving them all the trisomy problems they've got now—"

  "Actually, we were aware of the dangers involved with an extra autosome," Barenburg interrupted, sounding more than a little defensive. "We tried to remove the corresponding autosome from the egg cells before fertilization. But the technique somehow generated instabilities; there were breakages and translocations...." He shook his head as if to clear it. "But that's genetics, not physiology. Do you know anything about their brain chemistry problems?"

  "No. I assumed the retardation was due to simple brain damage."

  Barenburg shook his head. Something passed over his face, too quickly for Forester to identify. "Our best guess is that there's no real major cellular damage anywhere. The problem is lack of internal communication between the various sections of the brain due to inhibition of the chemicals that act as neurotransmitters at the neural synapses."

  Forester frowned. "Then how can they use TK?"

  "Apparently that function's fairly localized, and messages within that area get through okay. But for something like intelligence... well, when the abstract thought center is in the parietal lobe, the organizational center for that thought is up in the frontal lobe, and—oh, hell; you get the picture."

  "Yeah," Forester said, a sour taste in his mouth.

  "Let's get back to the problem at hand, shall we?" Kincaid cut in. "One of our Spoonbenders may be losing his touch—and if so, we've got to find out why, pronto. Doctor, there aren't any tests your people will want to do before we pull him off the line, are there?"

  Barenburg sighed. "Probably not. You want us to start right away?"

  "Wait a second," Forester said. He'd been counting on Barenburg to be a little less gung-ho than the director was. "You take him off the line for tests and it's pretty certain he won't be coming back, isn't it? Well?"

  "Ted, look—"

  "You do plan an autopsy as your final test, don't you?"

  "Ted, you're out of line," Kincaid said softly, warningly.

  Forester turned to him. "Why? There are tests that could be done right where he is: changing his glucose or oxygen levels, for instance—"

  "That's enough!" Kincaid snapped. "Doctor, go ahead and get your team together to plan your procedure, but don't take any action until I give you my okay. Forester, come with me; I want to talk with you."

  He spun on his heel and stalked toward the door. Smoldering, Forester followed.

  —

  It is a long time before I dare to reach out across the large empty space again. Instead, I stay near the box I found the last time, searching among the bewildering collection of movement/flows in the area. There are many of them, all seemingly different, with purposes I cannot even guess at. Part of me would like to remain here and learn... but I know I wish to find the other, more confusing thing again. Letting go, I reach out.

  It is closer to me than it was last time, and when I touch it I am startled. I recoil, but do not leave. Instead, I wait nearby until I am better prepared and then touch it cautiously.

  This time it is easier. There are different levels, I find, and if I am careful I can avoid the more frightening parts. I try and understand this thing... and slowly I learn why it feels familiar to me.

  It is a thing like me.

  The discovery that there is something else like me without being me should frighten me. But it does not. Perhaps—somehow—I have known all along that such things existed. I do not understand how I could know and yet not know, but it seems right.

  I sense my limited attention to my work is slipping still further, but I hardly notice. I wish to study this thing as best I can. My work is important, but I will do it later.

  —

  Kincaid closed the conference room door and pointed Forester toward a chair. "Sit down."

  Forester did so. Kincaid pulled up a second chair, but instead of sitting in it put one foot onto the seat. Leaning over slightly, he rested his forearms on his knee and regarded his operations chief coolly. "Forester, let's let our hair down, shall we? I've been watching you the last couple of months, and ever since the problems started with Twenty-Seven you've seemed less and less enthusiastic about the Project. What's the story?"

  Forester shook his head. "I don't know. I'm just starting to wonder if what we're doing is right."

  "One's highest duty is to serve one's fellow man and to benefit humanity, right? Well, that's exactly what we're doing. Do you have any idea how many tons of radioactive waste are produced in this country every year? That's not even mentioning the cubic miles of pesticides and industrial time-bomb chemicals—all of which, please note, the Spoonbenders could handle with equal ease. Once the genetics people figure out how to tailor a memory RNA for the process, ripping apart a PCB molecule won't be any harder for them than yanking neutrons out of strontium 90. We need Project Recovery, Ted; America's choking on its own waste, and this is the best answer we've come up with in fifty years. It may be the only good answer we'll ever get."

  "I know all that," Forester said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "And if we were using anything but human children I wouldn't mind. But... I keep thinking we may be taking something from them that we have no right to take."

  "Like what—their childhood? Look: they are not normal children. In fact, whether under modern standards you can even consider them human is an open question. They're not aware of their surroundings; they've got less intelligence than monkeys and a lower motor function index than a normal six-month fetus."

  "Dr. Barenburg thought they might be aware of their surroundings."

  "Barenburg imagines things," Kincaid said shortly. "The point is that, if a fetus isn't considered human, one of these Spoonbenders certainly shouldn't be."

  "So maybe we should reconsider the fetus issue, too," Forester said, only half-jokingly.

  Kincaid gave him an odd look, and for a moment was silent. "Look, Ted, maybe you're getting too close to your work," he said in a somewhat calmer tone. "Maybe you should consider taking a leave of absence, going away somewhere for a while."

  Forester smiled lopsidedly. "What, from the top-secret insides of Project Recovery? Isn't that like resigning from the Mafia? Once I'm off the grounds how do you know I won't go screaming to the media about how our big black box really works?"

  Kincaid shrugged. "Oh, well, I didn't mean you could just go anywhere you wanted. But the government keeps some resort-type, out-of-the-way places for this sort of thing where you'd be safely away from the public. It's not that what we're doing is in any way illegal," he added hastily, sensing perhaps that he was in danger of backing into a corner, "but you know what kind of unfair backlash could be stirred up if the lunatic fringe got hold of the story before the Spoonbenders proved themselves. You understand."

  "Yeah." Perfectly. "Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll hold off on the vacation for a while."

  "You sure? It'd do you good."

  "I'm sure." Forester got to his feet. "But thanks for your concern. I'd better get back to the control room now; the doctor might need my help."

  "All right."
Kincaid fixed him with a hard look. "But keep your feelings on 'simmer,' okay? For your blood pressure's sake as much as the Project's."

  "Sure."

  Yes, he would avoid public displays, Forester decided as he strode down the hall. But private voicing of his concern was another matter—and if Kincaid was wholly at peace with his conscience, Dr. Barenburg was almost certainly not. With a little persuasion from Forester, maybe Spoonbender Twenty-Seven wouldn't be sacrificed. At least not quite so quickly...

  —

  I am learning faster than I ever have before. It is frightening, but it is also exciting.

  The thing—the "person"—that I touch knows so much more than I do that I know I will never fully understand him. But somehow his knowledge is... flowing... into me, just as other things flow into me through the tubes in my body.

  (I had never known before what those things were or what they did. I understand only a little even now, but I will learn more.)

  The person knows much about the box where the movement/flow ("current") from my box ended, but it only makes me realize there was more about it to understand than I thought. The other things ("instruments") where currents flow are perhaps less different than I expected; there is a similarity between them, somehow, though I do not yet understand it.

  The is so much I do not understand!

  But the strangest part of all is in the person itself. The thoughts I can touch are thoroughly mixed with feelings I can sense but not understand. Some—a very few—are a little like the fear or excitement I myself can feel. But even they are changed into things I can barely recognize... and they frighten me.

  I feel very small.

  But I will not give up. I can no longer return and be wholly satisfied with my work, though the desire to please is as strong as before. I have learned so much; surely I can be of more service doing something else. That would give me great satisfaction.

  Letting knowledge flow into me, I ponder this possibility.