“Why do we have weapons if they were not intended for use?” Schruille asked. “Do you know the answer, Max?”
“I know of your weapons,” Allgood said. “They are the ultimate safeguard for your persons.”
“Of course we have weapons!” Nourse shouted. “But why must we—”
“Nourse, you demean yourself,” Calapine said.
Nourse pushed himself back in his throne, hands gripping the arms. “Demean myself!”
“Let us review this new development,” Schruille said. “Cyborgs we knew existed. They have eluded us consistently. Thus, they control computer editing channels and have sympathy among the Folk. Thus, we see, they have an Action Arm which can sacrifice … I say sacrifice a member for the good of the whole.”
Nourse stared at him, wide-eyed, drinking the words.
“And we,” Schruille said, “we had forgotten how to be thoroughly brutal.”
“Faaah!” Nourse barked.
“If you injure a man with a weapon,” Schruille said, “which is the responsible party—the weapon or the one who wields it?”
“Explain yourself,” Calapine whispered.
Schruille pointed to Allgood in the screen. “There is our weapon. We’ve wielded it times without number until it learned to wield itself. We’ve not forgotten how to be brutal, we’ve merely forgotten that we are brutal.”
“What rot!” Nourse said.
“Look,” Schruille said. He pointed up to the watching scanners, every one of them alive. “There’s my evidence,” Schruille said. “When have so many watched in the globe?”
A few of the lights began to wink out, but came back as the channels were taken over by other watchers.
Allgood watching from the screen felt the thrill of complete fascination. A tight sensation in his chest prevented deep breaths, but he ignored it. The Optimen facing violence! After a lifetime playing with euphemisms, Allgood found the thought of this almost unacceptable. It had been so swift. But then these were the live-forevers, the people who could not fail. He wondered then at the thoughts which raced through their minds.
Schruille, the usually silent and watchful, looked down at Allgood and said, “Who else has eluded us, Max?”
Allgood found himself unable to speak.
“The Durants are missing,” Schruille said. “Svengaard has not been found. Who else?”
“No one, Schruille. No one.”
“We want them captured,” Schruille said.
“Of course, Schruille.”
“Alive,” Calapine said.
“Alive, Calapine?” Allgood asked.
“If it’s possible,” Schruille said.
Allgood nodded. “I obey, Schruille.”
“You may get back to your work now,” Schruille said.
The screen went blank.
Schruille busied himself with the controls in the arm of his throne.
“What’re you doing?” Nourse demanded and he heard the petulance in his own voice, despising it.
“I remove the censors which excluded violence from our eyes except as a remote datum,” Schruille said. “It is time we observed the reality of our land.”
Nourse sighed. “If you feel it’s necessary.”
“I know it’s necessary.”
“Most interesting,” Calapine said.
Nourse looked at her. “What do you find interesting in this obscenity?”
“This exhilaration I feel,” she said. “It’s most interesting.”
Nourse whirled away from her, glared at Schruille. He could see now that there definitely was a skin blemish on Schruille’s face—beside his nose.
12
To Svengaard, raised in the ordered world of the Optimen, the idea that they were fallible came as heresy. He tried to put it out of his mind and his ears. To be fallible was to be subject to death. Only the lower orders suffered thus. Not the Optimen. How could they be fallible?
He knew the surgeon sitting across from him in the pale dawn light that filtered through narrow slots in a domed ceiling. The man was Toure Igan, one of Central’s surgical elite, a person to whom only the most delicate genetico-medical problems were posed.
The room they occupied was a tight little space stolen between the walls of an air-system cap servicing the subterranean warrens of the Cascade Complex. Svengaard sat in a comfortable chair, but his arms and legs were bound. Other people were using the space, crowding past the little table where Igan sat. The people carried oddly shaped packages. For the most part they ignored Igan and his companion.
Svengaard studied the dark, intense features of the Central surgeon. Crease lines in the man’s face betrayed the beginning of enzymic failure. He was starting to age. But the eyes were the blue of a summer sky and still young.
“You must choose sides,” Igan had said.
Svengaard allowed his attention to wander. A man passed carrying a golden metallic ball. From one of his pockets protruded a short silver chain on which dangled a breeder fetish in the shape of a lingam.
“You must answer,” Igan said.
Svengaard looked at the wall beside him—plasmeld, the inevitable plasmeld. The space stank of disinfectants and the ersatz-garden effect of air purifier perfumes.
People continued to pass through the narrow room. The sameness of their garments began to weigh on Svengaard. Who were these people? That they were members of the Underground, that was obvious. But who were they?
A woman touched him, crowding past. Svengaard looked up into a white smile in a black face, recognized a Zeek female, a face like Potter’s but the skin darker … a surgical mistake. She wore a bracelet of human hair on her right wrist. It was blonde hair. Svengaard stared at the bracelet until the woman rounded the curve of the room out of his sight.
“It’s open battle now,” Igan said. “You must believe me. Your own life depends on it.”
My own life? Svengaard wondered. He tried to think about his own life, identify it. He had a tertiary wife, little more than a playmate, a woman like himself whose every request for a breeder permit had been denied. For a moment, he couldn’t picture her face, lost the shape of it in memories of previous wives and playmates.
She isn’t my life, he thought. Who is my life?
He was conscious of a fatigue that went to the bone, and a hangover from the narcotics his captors had administered during the night. He remembered the hands seizing him, that gasping look into a wall that could not be a door but was, the lighted space beyond. And he remembered awakening here with Igan across from him.
“I’ve held nothing back,” Igan said. “I’ve told you everything. Potter barely escaped with his life. The order’s already out to get you. Your computer nurse is dead. Many people have died. More will die. They have to be sure, don’t you understand? They can leave nothing to chance.”
What is my life? Svengaard asked himself. And he thought now about his comfortable apartment, the artifacts and entertainment reels, the reference works, his friends, the safely ordinary routine of his position.
“But where would I go?” Svengaard asked.
“A place has been prepared.”
“No place is safe from them,” Svengaard said. In saying this, he sensed for the first time the depth of his own resentment against the Optimen.
“Many places are safe,” Igan said. “They merely pretend to supersensual perception. Their real powers lie in machines and instruments, the secret surveillance. But machines and instruments can be twisted to other purposes. And the Optimen depend on Folk to do their violence.”
Svengaard shook his head. “This is all nonsense.”
“Except for one thing,” Igan said, “they are as we—var iously human. We know this from experience.”
“But why would they do these things you accuse them of?” Svengaard protested. “It’s not sensible. They’re good to us.”
“Their sole interest is in maintaining themselves,” Igan said. “They walk a tightrope. As long as there’s no signif
icant change in their environment, they’ll continue living … indefinitely. Let significant change creep into their lives and they are like us—subject to the whims of nature. For them, you see, there can be no nature—no nature they don’t control.”
“I don’t believe it,” Svengaard said. “They’re the ones who love us and care for us. Look at all they’ve done for us.”
“I have looked.” Igan shook his head. Svengaard was being more pig-headed than they’d expected. He screened out contrary evidence and stuck to the old formulas.
“You want them to succumb,” Svengaard accused. “Why do you want this?”
“Because they’ve deprived us of evolution,” Igan said.
Svengaard stared at him. “What?”
“They’ve made themselves the only free individuals in our world,” Igan said. “But individuals don’t evolve. Populations evolve, not individuals. We have no population.”
“But the Folk—”
“Yes, the Folk! Who among us are allowed to mate?” Igan shook his head. “You’re a gene surgeon, man! Haven’t you identified the pattern yet?”
“Pattern? What pattern? What do you mean?” Svengaard pushed himself up in the chair, cursed his bindings. His arms and legs felt numb.
“The Optimen hold to one cardinal rule of mating,” Igan said. “Return to the standard average. They allow a random interchange with the standard average organism to suppress development of unique individuals. Such few unique individuals as occur are not allowed to breed.”
Svengaard shook his head. “I don’t believe you,” he said. But he could feel the beginnings of doubt. His own case—no matter which mate he chose, the breeding permit was denied. He’d examined the genetic matchings himself, had seen configurations he would’ve sworn were viable—but the Optimen said no.
“You do believe me,” Igan said.
“But look at the long lives they give us,” Svengaard said. “I can expect almost two hundred years.”
“Medicine does that, not the Optimen,” Igan said. “Delicate, careful refinement of the enzymic prescription’s the key. That plus a proscribed life in which emotional upset is held to a minimum. Selected exercises and a diet chosen for your specific needs. It could be done for almost anyone.”
“Indefinite life?” Svengaard whispered.
“No! But long life, much longer than we get now. I’m going on four hundred years, myself—as are several of my contemporaries. Almost four hundred lovely years,” he said, remembering Calapine’s vicious phrase … and Nourse’s chuckle.
“Four hundred—you?” Svengaard asked.
“I agree it’s nothing compared to their many thousands,” Igan said. “But almost anyone could have these years, except they don’t permit it.”
“Why?” Svengaard asked.
“This way they can offer the bonus years to the selected few,” Igan said, “a reward for service. Without this rule they have no coin to buy us. You knew this! You’ve been trying to sell yourself to them for this coin all your life.”
Svengaard looked down at his bound hands. Is that my life? he wondered. Fettered hands? Who will buy my fettered hands?
“And you should hear Nourse chuckle at my pitiful four hundred years,” Igan said.
“Nourse?”
“Yes! Nourse of the Tuyere, Nourse the Cynic, Nourse of the more than forty thousand years! Why do you think Nourse is a Cynic?” Igan demanded. “There’re older Optimen, much older. Most of those aren’t Cynics.”
“I don’t understand,” Svengaard said. He stared at Igan, feeling weak, battered, unable to counter the force of these words and arguments.
“I forget you’re not of Central,” Igan said. “They classify themselves by the tiny bit of emotion they’re permitted. They’re Actionists, Emotionals, Cynics, Hedonists and Effetes. They pass through cynicism on their way to hedonism. The Tuyere already’s well occupied in pursuit of personal pleasure. There’s a pattern here, too, and none of it’s good.”
Igan studied Svengaard, weighing the effect of his words. Here was a creature barely above the Folk. He was medieval man. To him, Central and the Optimen were the “primum mobile” in control of all celestial systems. Beyond Central lay only the empyrean home of the Creator … and for the Svengaards of the world there was little distinction between Optiman and Creator. Both were higher than the moon and totally without fault.
“Where can we run?” Svengaard asked. “There’s no place to hide. They control the enzymic prescriptions. The minute one of us walks into a pharmacy for renewal, that’s the end.”
“We have our sources,” Igan said.
“But why would you want me?” Svengaard asked. He kept his eyes on his bindings.
“Because you’re a unique individual,” Igan said. “Because Potter wants you. Because you know of the Durant embryo.”
The Durant embryo, Svengaard thought. What’s the significance of the Durant embryo? It all comes back to that embryo.
He looked up, met Igan’s eyes.
“You find it difficult to see the Optimen in my description of them,” Igan said.
“Yes.”
“They’re a plague on the face of the earth,” Igan said. “They’re the earth’s disease!”
Svengaard recoiled from the bitterness of Igan’s voice.
“Saul has erased his thousands and David his ten thousands,” Igan said. “But the Optimen erase the future.”
A blocky hulk of a man squeezed past the narrow space beside the table, planted himself with his back to Svengaard.
“Well?” he asked. The voice carried a disturbing tone of urgency, just in that one word. Svengaard tried to see the face, but couldn’t move far enough to the side. There was just that wide belted back in a gray jacket.
“I don’t know,” Igan said.
“We can spare no more time,” the newcomer said. “Potter has completed his work.”
“The result?” Igan asked.
“He says successful. He used enzymic injection for quick recovery. The mother will be ready to move soon.” A thick hand moved over the shoulder to point a thumb at Svengaard. “What do we do with him?”
“Bring him,” Igan said. “What’s Central doing?”
“Ordered arrest and confinement of every surgeon.”
“So soon? Did they get Dr. Hand?”
“Yes, but he took the black door.”
“Stopped his heart,” Igan said. “The only thing. We can’t let them question one of us. How many does that leave us?”
“Seven.”
“Including Svengaard?”
“Eight then.”
“We’ll keep Svengaard restrained for the time being,” Igan said.
“They’re beginning to pull their special people out of Seatac,” the big man said.
Svengaard could see only half of Igan’s face past the newcomer, but that half showed a deep frown of concentration. The one visible eye looked at Svengaard, disregarded him.
“It’s obvious,” Igan said.
“Yes—they’re going to destroy the megalopolis.”
“Not destroy, sterilize.”
“You’ve hard Allgood speak of the Folk?”
“Many times. Vermin in their warrens. He’ll step on the entire region without a qualm. Is everything ready to move?”
“Ready enough.”
“The driver?”
“Programed for the desired response.”
“Give Svengaard a shot to keep him quiet, then. We won’t have time for him once we’re on the road.”
Svengaard stiffened.
The bulky back turned. Svengaard looked up into a pair of glistening eyes, gray, measuring, devoid of emotion. One of the thick hands lifted, carrying a springshot ampule. The hand touched his neck and there was a jolt.
Svengaard stared up at that faceless face while the fuzzy clouds closed around his mind. His throat felt thick, tongue useless. He willed himself to protest, but no sound came. Awareness became a tightening gl
obe centered on a tiny patch of ceiling with slotted openings. The scene condensed, smaller and smaller—a frantic circle like an eye with slotted pupils..
He sank into a cushioned well of darkness.
13
Lizbeth lay on a bench with Harvey seated beside her, steadying her. There were five people here in a cubed space no bigger than a large packing box. The box had been fitted into the center of a normal load on an overland transporter van. A single glowtube in the corner above her head illuminated the interior with a sickly yellow light. She could see Doctors Igan and Boumour on a rough bench opposite her, their feet stretched across the bound, gagged, and unconscious figure of Svengaard on the floor.
It was already night outside, Harvey had said. That must mean they’d come a goodly distance, she thought. She felt vaguely nauseated and her abdomen ached around the stitches. The thought of carrying her son within her carried a strange reassurance. There was a sense of fulfillment in it. Potter had said she could likely do without her regular enzymes while she carried the embryo. He’d obviously been thinking the embryo would be removed into a vat when they reached a safe place. But she knew she’d resist that. She wanted to carry her son full term. No woman had done that for thousands of years, but she wanted it.
“We’re picking up speed,” Igan said. “We must be out of the tubes onto the skyway.”
“Will there be checkpoints?” Boumour asked.
“Bound to be.”
Harvey sensed the accuracy of Igan’s assessment. Speed? Yes—their bodies were compensating for heavier pressure on the turns. Air was coming in a bit faster through the scoop ventilator under Lizbeth’s bench. There was a new hardness to the ground-effect suspension, less bounce. The turbines echoed loudly in the narrow box and he could smell unburned hydrocarbons.
Checkpoints? Security would use every means to see that no one escaped Seatac. He wondered then what was about to happen to the megalopolis. The surgeons had spoken of poison gas in the ventilators, sonics. Central had many weapons, they said. Harvey put out an arm to hold Lizbeth as they rounded a sharp corner.
He didn’t know how he felt about Lizbeth carrying their son within her. It was odd. Not obscene or disgusting … just odd. An instinctive response had come to focus within him and he looked around for dangers from which he could protect her. But there was only this box filled with the smell of stale sweat and oil.
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