The Micronauts

by Gordon Williams

  ‘‘Where did all this equipment come from?”

  ‘‘My old laboratory in the Brussels Institute of Biological Research. It was part of the deal when they let me come up here.”

  ‘‘I am told you were highly-regarded—some even say you could have been a future commissioner.”

  Bruce said nothing.

  ‘‘Your wife died and then Professor Richards was appointed chief-coordinator of SRP—is that why you decided to abandon the human race?”

  ‘‘Go to hell.”

  ‘‘You’re involved in this Project Arcadia, are you not? I am no scientist, but that sounds very interesting— ”

  Bruce shook his head. ‘‘Project Arcadia? Must be something new since I quit the department.”

  ‘‘You mentioned it to Assistant Comptroller Larson.”

  ‘‘What is Project Arcadia?”

  ‘‘You can ask the Commissioner.”

  Bruce stared at his tanks. His change of mind was abrupt—he started down the row, pulling every glass tank onto its side. Khomich saw some ants crawling across a trestle table. He grimaced, walking back to the door.

  ‘‘You’ll have to take your own chances,” he heard Bruce saying ...

  Before Bruce got into the car, now wearing his army jacket and cotton trousers, but still with the thong sandals on his bare feet, he looked up at the sky. The buzzard had gone.

  Robinson drove, with Khomich in the front passenger seat. It was twenty years since the mass withdrawal of famine survivors to the Scheduled Zones, and the unmaintained road was heavily pitted and cracked. So straight was it, however, they saw the old cart long before they reached the farm settlement by the dark forest of Scotch pines. Robinson slowed down.

  ‘‘Are these people hostiles?” Khomich asked.

  THE MICRONAUTS

  “We all tend to the hostile in the Outlands.”

  “Will they attack us?”

  “They’re a large family called Urkuts—they haven’t tried to steal anything from me for at least six months.”

  Robinson pulled up about twenty meters from the old cart which was blocking the road. Khomich scanned the open meadow on either side. “They were probably hoping we would come back in the dark. Cover us, Robinson.”

  As they walked to the cart Khomich sniffed. “Autumn is coming,” he said quietly. He looked across at the tumbledown farm buildings. “My people were just the same, stinking peasants. Offer them social justice, security, the chance to raise themselves out of the mud—and they spit in your face. They have been slaves to the land for so many generations they want to give it their blood.”

  “It’s called the spirit of freedom, Khomich. This is the only place you’ll find it—in the Outlands.”

  “Freedom?”

  Robinson shouted behind them. Looking around, they saw four men rising out of a concealed ditch at the side of the road, one gray-haired, three young and brown-haired, all bearded. Two of them were carrying shotguns. They advanced slowly in a line. The old man shouted to Bruce. He listened, then said to Khomich, “If we give them the car and your weapons, they’ll let us walk to Vaasa.”

  Khomich shrugged. Stepping in front of Bruce he held up his hands, apparently conceding defeat. “Okay, Robinson,” he said pleasantly, “I will do a three count. Keep talking to them, Professor.”

  Bruce shouted in Swedish. The four shaggy men nodded among themselves, faces registering success.

  “One, two, three,” Khomich said loudly.

  Robinson dived to one side, flattening himself on the road. Khomich had his pistol out of his waistband and had shot a young man carrying a shotgun before the others knew what was happening. Robinson shot another and rolled quickly off the road into the meadow flowers, firing again.

  Khomich went on shooting from a standing position, right arm fully extended, taking careful aim for each shot.

  THE MICRONAUTS

  Khomich went on shooting from a standing position, right arm fully extended, taking careful aim for each shot. Standing close beside him, Bruce could see no vestige of emotion or excitement on his face.

  When the four Urkuts lay sprawled on the road, he walked slowly toward them, right arm still extended. Robinson got to his feet. Khomich motioned for him to join Bruce. They both watched while Khomich quickly and methodically put a bullet into each man’s head.

  “They did ask for it,” Robinson said reproachfully.

  “I did you an injustice, Khomich—you don’t need anybody to do your killing. Congratulations—I don’t imagine their women and children will survive the winter.”

  Khomich stretched his legs and let his palm feel his cropped fair hair. “That is the way of things, Professor. While you are playing God to your bugs, the rest of us are fighting a war of survival.”

  “I pray to God you lose, Khomich.”

  j

  Nobody took any risks that night. As soon as darkness fell, they heard the tawny owl. The dewfall was so heavy it made the nylon tents sag.

  “Do you honestly think we could survive permanently in this environment?’’ Anne asked, her voice muffled by the sleeping bag which she had zipped up to her nose.

  “We don’t know all the genetic factors yet, but I’m sure reproduction will be possible. The cost of the initial Crossover is the prohibitive factor—we will have to choose only the genetic cream of the existing population. That’s why the whole project has to be kept secret until we can present it to the Supreme Council as an accomplished fact—Towne is a sentimental populist; he would veto Arcadia out of hand simply because the whole world population could not cross over. But, once we show the film, the Supreme Council will see it my way—this is our only chance of survival. What point is there in using up our dwindling resources keeping millions of unproduc- tives and degenerates alive? No species can survive unless it can adapt; evolution has taught us that. But we can be masters of our own evolution!’’

  “I’m freezing, George. Can I come into your sleeping bag?’’

  “Towne will be overruled; the Supreme Council will back me; we will clear special areas to establish colonies; we will have a phased program for. . .’’

  His voice droned on relentlessly. From the vast

  darkness outside she heard a terrifying array of sounds, not just the soft hooting of the owl, but the thin screams of bats, clickings, rustlings, scurryings, all coming from a seething night world which she now regarded as a real, tangible hell. Even as she turned over, she was sure she could feel millions of small, demonic creatures wriggling and twisting in the soft humus beneath the nylon floor of the tent...

  Bruce sprawled in the Commissioner’s chair at the top end of the long conference table, his sandaled feet up on the shiny green marble. He brought what looked like a strip of greasy leather from his jacket pocket and tore off a sliver.

  “They are very strict about food regulations in this building,” Khomich said quietly.

  Bruce smiled. “Makes you nervous, does it, any food not produced by enzymotic chemistry? The truly modern man—Khomich—a legal murderer who is frightened of bacteria. Tell me, Khomich, why don’t you— ”

  “Why don’t you keep quiet?”

  “The cyborg has a temper! You know what a cyborg is, Khomich—a cybernetic organism, an exogenously extended organization complex functioning as a homeostatic system. Blessed are the cyborgs, for they have inherited the earth. Congratulations.”

  “Shut up!”

  Bruce prised a shred of flesh from his eye-teeth, using his thumbnail. “So, here I am, back in the heart of WFC. Nothing seems to have changed much—Towne is looking older— ”

  “That’s because I am older,” said the Commissioner. He was standing in the connecting doorway, behind him the young bureaucrat Bruce remembered from Kennedy Airport.

  “The great man himself,” Bruce said ironically. “Here we are at the heart of the great crusade to save

  humanity and what do we find—bureaucrats and killers! A wily old politician and
an ape who could not make a short trip into the Outlands without wiping out a complete family settlement.” He stared disdainfully at Larson. ‘‘And a dessicated creep who likes to see children going hungry. Three dedicated saviors of humanity!”

  “I see you haven’t mellowed, Bob,” the Commissioner said pleasantly, taking a seat halfway down the table. Larson closed the door and stood behind him. ‘‘Larson—tell us the professor’s exact words as you heard them at Kennedy on Friday.”

  Larson blushed. He now had strong doubts about coming directly to the Commissioner. The whole thing was bigger than he had imagined—and if Professor Richards and other senior WFC executives were planning a shake-up, he could not see Towne winning. The man looked positively ancient.

  ‘‘Professor Bruce was referring to bureaucrats—he meant administrators. He said, ‘Your type won’t be happy until you produce a blissful Arcadia where you have the world population caged and numbered.’ He also said I should report him to Chief-Coordinator Richards.”

  ‘‘You say that, Bob?”

  Bruce shook with soundless laughter. ‘‘So the great crusade leader fills his world-saving days with spy reports on the latest airport lounge small talk?”

  ‘‘You deny using the word Arcadia?”

  ‘‘Deny? Is it important? Should I have said heaven—or paradise? Are you arresting people for illegal vocabularism?”

  ‘Take a look at this list of equipment. Does it mean anything to you?”

  Bruce looked down the first sheet, shaking his head. Something on the second sheet made him frown.

  ‘‘Any discernible pattern to that stuff?” Towne asked.

  ‘‘Some of it you’d need for a biology lab—but there’s also stuff that looks more to do with the Outer Space program. Titanium—you wouldn’t want two tons of that for a biology lab.”

  “What would you want it for?’’

  “It’s lighter than iron, but twice as resistant—better than steel, practically immune to corrosion—melting point: one-seven-two-five degrees centigrade.’’ His hard, tanned forefinger ran down the list. “Micro-lenses, infrared spectrometer—and all these micro-electronic circuits—a helluva lot of computer hardware—if it’s a biology lab, it’s doing some pretty advanced work. What’s this all about, Towne?”

  “All that stuff was stolen. There’s some kind of conspiracy to do secret research—why, I don’t know. What I have to establish is whether you’re involved, Bob. It seems to have a code name—Project Arcadia.”

  “And you had me dragged all this way because I happened to use the word accidentally?”

  “Not entirely. You were joint-deputy coordinator of SRP. You gave up the post for reasons I never fully believed in—I do know you make no secret of your contempt for me. Your consultancy status was authorized by George Richards—whom you claim to detest—and it gives you freedom to travel around a lot of secret SRP establishments. Then, just as Larson here stumbles on what looks like a major conspiracy, you happen to be in Kennedy Airport, bribing officials, using the very code-word for the project. He says he’ll report you and you tell him to contact George Richards. You blame me for being suspicious?”

  Bruce grimaced wearily. “I’ve had no personal contact with Richards since I walked out of this building three years ago. What happens now—your pet storm- trooper going to give me a lie-test with his boots?”

  The Commissioner stared at him. Then, without looking around, he said, “Larson, I want you to fly immediately to Johannesburg. You’ll ostensibly be doing a routine audit of the zonal Budgetary office—in fact, you’ll be looking for the original procurement order for the titanium on that list. We need first-hand evidence and any authorization of that magnitude will have been double- checked against forgery. Schumann will have your travel papers ready in half an hour. Contact me when you’ve

  found it—and whatever happens say nothing of this to anybody. Understood?”

  ‘‘Yes, sir.”

  ‘‘And Larson—when you return, I will have promulgated your upgrading, you’ve proven you can handle a lot more responsibility.”

  ‘‘Thank you, sir.”

  Larson left the conference room, cheek twitching uncontrollably, but this time from pleasure. The Commissioner nodded for Khomich to sit down.

  ‘‘Bob,” he said, ‘‘I’ve just had a report of a ten percent rise of rickets among child factory workers in Korea. We have to make them work three hours a day because of manpower shortage—they’re suffering from poor nutrition and lack of sunlight. A Crash Aid program means some other zone taking a cut, probably in Japan. This evening, I’m going on the European network to explain why we’re having to cut down all ration entitlements for a period of one month—it may very well be longer. We expect large-scale rioting. Bob—you remember the first years of the famine?”

  ‘‘That’s a stupid question.”

  ‘‘A lot of people died who could have lived—there was still a lot of food being hoarded in national stores. I’m hounded by memories of corpses piling up, Bob— ordinary people who died through greed and selfishness. That’s why I am totally ruthless about fighting for our policies of fair distribution. In eleven days, I will be asking the Supreme Council to sanction the biggest budget of WFC’s history. A lot of people are beginning to make greedy noises, Bob. This would be a helluva good time for disruptive elements to break up the organization. Now—my only concern is to keep WFC together until our scientists get the breakthroughs that will produce food surpluses, when all women will be allowed to have babies, when— ”

  “I know the sermon, Towne. What’s it got to do with me?”

  ‘‘All that stuff was systematically stolen over the last fifteen months. It seems to be for what some SRP staff

  know as Project Arcadia. But Project Arcadia appears on no budget approval list, there is nothing in the data banks, the SRP staff know only that it is top secret and that George Richards handles it personally. Now—on top of everything else—George Richards has more or less disappeared. He left this building for Paris eight days ago—he then flew to London, but nobody knows where he went from there. What does that suggest to you?”

  ‘‘Richards stole all this stuff?”

  ‘‘It could only have been done with his authority.”

  ‘‘I’d say he’s made some kind of discovery and wants all the glory for himself. I always warned you he was a one-man band.”

  ‘‘He’s devious, monumentally arrogant, and loyal only to himself. He’s also a genius. That’s why I made him chief-coordinator, I knew that the WFC had to contain him, or he would be a constant source of trouble.”

  ‘‘Didn’t I say he’d make trouble anyway?”

  ‘‘Bob—I know you think I’m just another devious, power-mad politician, but surely you agree with my policies?”

  “You say the right things, but politicians always did. It was what you did behind closed doors that fouled up this planet, you and the industrialists and the military, all of—”

  Khomich slapped the marble table. His small eyes were hooded with anger. “Did soldiers and politicians breed these germs that swept the grainfields? I do my killing face to face. I never made money working for the chemical monopolies; I never brainwashed ignorant peasant farmers into drenching their fields with indestructible toxics that poisoned the rivers and the seas. You keep quiet about soldiers and politicians, Mister Bugs Professor!”

  “Thus spake the loyal butcher,” Bruce said quietly.

  For a moment Khomich looked furious enough to launch himself up the table.

  “We all share the blame,” Towne said, in the tone of a pronouncement. “Bob—whatever you think of me, you

  know that I stand for keeping people alive—all the people. Suppose this Project Arcadia is part of a conspiracy by George Richards and others in this building to get me out of office?”

  ‘‘I wouldn’t be surprised. Backstabbing is what you people thrive on.”

  “Do you want to prove you’r
e innocent of any participation in the conspiracy?”

  “How the hell can I prove it?”

  “Help me find out what Richards is up to. Is that stolen stuff meant for some weapon or invention that can be used against WFC? You’re a scientist, you— ”

  “Help you play power-politics? No thank you.”

  “Don’t you care what happens to WFC?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “I see.” Towne drummed his fingers on the marble. “Well, I have no time to be subtle. I must know what Richards is up to before the Supreme Council session. I cannot use normal investigatory channels because it is possible Security Secretary Khouri is part of the conspiracy. You know your way around the whole SRP set-up and you have the scientific knowledge to evaluate Project Arcadia. Other scientists will speak to you where they would clam up against Staff-Commander Khomich. You also have the supreme advantage of having no career to promote. If I cannot appeal to your sense of humanity, I must appeal to your sense of self-preservation.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I could have you charged with food-bribery. The survival rate among ten-year men in the permafrost construction camps is roughly fifteen percent—nobody has ever lived long enough to die of old age.”

  “You’d do that?”

  Towne nodded.

  Bruce tore off a sliver of dried meat and chewed slowly. “You certainly know the shortest distance between yes and no, Towne.”

  Towne smiled. “You can use the emergency Control Room, there’s a Gamma Five digital computer there. I’ll

  send you a reliable operator named Annalise Koberstein; you can screen up anything you need from all WFC data banks, personnel records, and so forth. One thing I’ve noticed—a lot of that stuff seems to have gone through Le Havre or Cherbourg on its route. Maybe they’re using an existing SRP establishment. You have access to me night or day—don’t use the video-link. Schumann will draw up blanket security and travel clearances to cover you both for any part of the— ”

  “You mean I have to work withh/m?” Bruce snapped, glaring up the table at Khomich.