The Shockwave Rider

by John Brunner

  “That in fact appears to be true.”

  “If you believed that you wouldn’t be working so hard to universalize the new conformity.”

  “Is that a term you coined yourself?”

  “No, I borrowed it from someone whose writings aren’t particularly loved at Tarnover: Angus Porter.”

  “Well, it’s a resounding phrase. But does it mean anything?”

  “I wouldn’t bother to answer except that it’s better to be talking in present time than sitting back inside my head while you interrogate my memory … because you know damned well what it means. Look at yourself. You’re part of it. It’s a century old. It began when for the first time people in a wealthy country started tailoring other cultures to their own lowest common denominator: people with money to spend who were afraid of strange food, who told the restaurateur to serve hamburgers instead of enchiladas or fish and chips instead of couscous, who wanted something pretty to hang on the wall at home and not what some local artist had sunk his heart and soul in, who found it too hot in Rio and too cold in Zermatt and insisted on going there anyhow.”

  “We’re to be blamed because that’s how people reacted long before Tarnover was founded?” Freeman shook his head. “I remain unconvinced.”

  “But this is the concept you started with, the one you’ve clung to! You walked straight into a trap with no way out. You wanted to develop a generalized model of mankind, and this was the handiest to build on: more general than pre-World War I European royalty despite the fact that that was genuinely cosmopolitan, and more homogeneous than the archetypal peasant culture, which is universal but individualized. What you’ve wound up with is a schema where the people who obey those ancient evolutionary principles you cite so freely—as for example by striking roots in one place that will last a lifetime—are regarded by their fellows as ‘rather odd.’ It won’t be long before they’re persecuted. And then how will you justify your claim that the message in the genes overrides consciously directed modern change?”

  “Are you talking about the so-called economists, who won’t take advantage of the facilities our technology offers? More fool them; they choose to be stunted.”

  “No, I’m talking about the people who are surrounded by such a plethora of opportunity they dither and lapse into anxiety neurosis. Friends and neighbors rally round to help them out, explain the marvels of today and show them how, and go away feeling virtuous. But if tomorrow they have to repeat the process, and the day after, and the day after that …? No, from the patronizing stage to the persecuting stage has always been a very short step.”

  After a brief silence Freeman said, “But it’s easy to reconcile the views I really hold, as distinct from the distorted versions you’re offering. Mankind originated as a nomadic species, following game herds and moving from one pasture to another with the seasons. Mobility of similar order has been reintegrated into our culture, at least in the wealthy nations. Yet there are advantages to living in an urban society, like sanitation, easy communications, tolerably cheap transportation … And thanks to our ingenuity with computers, we haven’t had to sacrifice these conveniences.”

  “One might as well claim that the tide which rubs pebbles smooth on a beach is doing the pebbles a service because being round is prettier than being jagged. It’s of no concern to a pebble what shape it is. But it’s very important to a person. And every surge of your tide is reducing the variety of shapes a human being can adopt.”

  “Your extended metaphors do you credit,” Freeman said. “But I detect, and so do my monitors, that you’re straining after them like a man at a party who’s desperately pretending that he’s not quite drunk. Today’s session is due to end in a few minutes; I’ll cut it short and renew the interrogation in the morning.”

  THE RIGHT-ON THING FOR THE WRONG-OFF REASON

  The experience was exactly like riding in a car when the driver, seeing ahead a patch of bad road with a lot of potholes, tramps hard on the accelerator in preference to slowing down. There was a drumming sound, and certain landmarks beside the route were noticeable, but essentially it was a matter of being there then and subsequently here now.

  Just about enough time was perceived as having elapsed for the passenger to realize he wouldn’t have traveled so fast on such a lousy bumpy bit of road … and ask himself why not, since it gave excellent results.

  Then, very abruptly, it stopped.

  “Where the hell have you brought me?”

  Looking around a room with rough brown walls, an old-style spring bed, carpet on the floor which wasn’t even fitted, a view of sunset through broad shallow windows that distracted him before he could enumerate other objects like chairs and a table and so forth. They registered as belonging in the sort of junk store whose owner would label as antique anything older than himself.

  “You poor shivver,” Kate said. She was there too. “You have one hell of a bad case. I asked you, did you think it was a good idea to head for Lap-of-the-Gods? And you said yes.”

  He was sitting on a chair which happened to be near him. He closed his hands on its arms until his knuckles were almost white. With much effort he said, “Then I was crazy. I thought of coming to a town like this long ago and realized it was the first place they’d think of looking.”

  Theoretically, for somone trying to mislay a previous identity, no better spot could be found on the continent than this, or some other of the settlements created by refugees from Northern California after the Great Bay Quake. Literally millions of traumatized fugitives had straggled southward. For years they survived in tents and shanties, dependent on federal handouts because they were too mentally disturbed to work for a living and in most cases afraid to enter a building with a solid roof for fear it would crash down and kill them. They were desperate for a sense of stability, and sought it in a thousand irrational cults. Confidence-tricksters and fake evangelists found them easy prey. Soon it was a tourist lure to visit their settlements on Sunday and watch the running battles between adherents of rival—but equally lunatic—beliefs. Insurance extra.

  There had been nothing comparable in western civilization since the Lisbon Earthquake shook the foundations of Christianity across half of Europe in 1755.

  Now some semblance of regular government was in effect and had been for a quarter-century. But the scars left by the quake were cicatrized into the names of the new cities: Insecurity, Precipice, Protempore, Waystation, Transience … and Lap-of-the-Gods.

  Inevitably, because these were new cities in a nation that had lacked a frontier these hundred years, they had attracted the restless, the dissident, sometimes the criminal elements from elsewhere. Up-to-date maps showed them dotted like accidental inkblots from Monterey to San Diego and inland over a belt almost two hundred miles wide. They constituted a nation within a nation. Tourists could still come here. But most often they decided not to. It felt more like home in Istanbul.

  “Sandy!” Sitting down in a chair facing him, Kate tapped his knee. “You’re out of it so don’t slip back. Talk! And this time make sense. What makes you so terrified of Tarnover?”

  “If they catch me they’ll do what they meant to do in the first place. What I fled from.”

  “That being—?”

  “They’ll make me over in a version of myself I don’t approve.”

  “That happens to everybody all the time. The lucky ones win, the others suffer. There’s something deeper. Something worse.”

  He gave a weary nod. “Yes, there is. My conviction that if they get the chance to try they’ll do it, and I won’t have a hope in hell of fighting back.”

  There was a dull silence. At last Kate nodded, her face grave.

  “I got there. You’d know what was being done to you. And later you’d be fascinated by the tape of your reactions.”

  With a humorless laugh he said, “I think you lie about your age. Nobody could be that cynical so young. Of course you’re right.”

  Another pause, this time full of gra
y depression. She broke it by saying, “I wish you’d been in a fit state to talk before we left KC. You must have been just going through the motions. But never mind. I think we came to a right place. If you’ve been avoiding towns like Lap-of-the-Gods for—what is it?—six years, then they won’t immediately start combing California for you.”

  It was amazing how calmly he took that, he thought. To hear his most precious secret mentioned in passing … Above all, it was nearly beyond belief that someone finally was on his side.

  Hence the calmness? Very probably.

  “Are we in a hotel?” he inquired.

  “Sort of. They call it an open lodge. You get a room and then fend for yourself. There’s a kitchen through there”—a vague gesture toward the door of the bedroom—“and there’s no limit on how long you can stay. Nor any questions asked when you check in, luckily.”

  “You used your code?”

  “Did you expect me to use yours? I have lots of credit. I’m not exactly an economist, but I’m blessed with simple tastes.”

  “In that case the croakers will come calling any moment.”

  “Shit on that. You’re thinking in contemporary terms. Check into a hotel, ten seconds later the fact’s on file at Canaveral, right? Not here, Sandy. They still process credit by hand. It could be a week before I’m debbed for this room.”

  Hope he had almost ceased to believe in burgeoned in his eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “Hell, no. Today could be the day the desk clerk makes up his bills. All I’m saying is it isn’t automatic. You know about this town, don’t you?”

  “I know about so many paid-avoidance areas …” He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Is this one that’s settled down to about a 1960 level?”

  “I guess that would be fairly close. I haven’t been here before, though I have been to Protempore, and I’m told the two are comparable. That’s why I hit on it. I didn’t want to take you anywhere I might be recognized.”

  She leaned toward him. “Now let’s concentrate, shall we? The dobers aren’t howling at the door, and it’s long past time for me to learn the rest of your history. You seem to have spent a long while at Tarnover. Think you’re fettered by a posthypnotic?”

  He drew a deep breath. “No. I wondered about that myself and concluded that I can’t be. Hypnosis isn’t one of their basic tools. And if it were, the command would have been activated long ago, when I first quit the place. Of course, by now they may well use posthypnotics to stop others copying my example. … But what I’m hamstrung by is in myself.”

  Kate bit her lower lip with small and very white teeth. She said at length, “Funny. Meeting those grads from Tarnover that I mentioned, I felt sure they’d been treated with some quasi-hypnotic technique. They make my skin crawl, you know. They give the impression that they’ve learned everything, they could never possibly be wrong. Kind of inhuman. So my assumption has always been that Tarnover is some sort of behavioral-intensive education center for bright deprived kids, where they use extreme forms of stimulation as an inducement to learn. Zero-distraction environments—drugs, maybe—I don’t know.”

  He picked on one key word. “You said … deprived?”

  “Mm-hm.” With a nod. “I noticed that at once. Either they were orphaned, or they made no bones about hating their parents and family. It gave them a curious solidarity. Almost like White House aides. Or maybe more like the Jesus bit: ‘Who is my father and my mother?’ ” She spread her hands.

  “When did you first hear about Tarnover?”

  “Oh, it was news when I graduated from high school and went to UMKC four years ago. There was no publicity, at least not the drums-and-trumpets type. More kind of, ‘We got the answer to Akadiemgorodok—we think.’ Low-key stuff.”

  “Shit, but they’re clever!” he said savagely. “If I didn’t hate them I’d have to admire them.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the ideal compromise. You just described what they obviously want the world to think about Tarnover; how did you put it? An intensive education center for bright deprived kids? Very admirable!”

  “And it isn’t?” Her sharp eyes rested on his face like sword points.

  “No. It’s where they’re breeding the elite to run the continent.”

  “I wish,” she said, “I didn’t suspect you of being literal.”

  “Me too! But … Look, you’re in power. Think what’s the most dangerous thing about a kid with no parents and a high IQ.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, then suggested, “He won’t look at things the way the men in charge do. But he could be more right than they are.”

  He slapped his thigh in delight. “Kate, you impress the hell out of me! You’ve hit on it. Who are the people recruited to Tarnover and Crediton Hill and the rest of the secret centers? Why, those who might invent sides of their own if the government doesn’t enroll them on its side while they’re still tractable. Yes, yes! But on top of that— Say, did you check this room for bugs?”

  The exclamation was overdue; what had become of his customary caution? He was half out of his chair before she said with a trace of scorn, “Of course I did! And I have a damned good bug detector. One of my boyfriends built it for me. He’s a post-grad in the UMKC school of industrial espionage. So relax and keep talking.”

  He sank back in relief and mopped his forehead.

  “You said these Tarnover trainees you’ve met are mostly in the Behavioral Sciences Lab. Any of them in biology?”

  “I met a couple but not at UMKC. Over the state line in Lawrence. Or they were. I loathed them and didn’t keep in touch.”

  “Did they ever mention the pride and joy of Tarnover—the crippled kids they build with genius IQ?”

  “What?”

  “I met the first of them, who was called Miranda. Of course she was not a genius, so they counted it small loss when she died at four. But techniques have improved. The last example I heard about before I I quit still couldn’t walk, or even eat, but she could use a computer remote with the best of us and sometimes she was quicker than her teachers. They specialize in girls, naturally. Men, embryonically speaking, are imperfect women, as you know.”

  There was never much color in Kate’s face. In the next few seconds what little there was drained away, leaving the flesh of her forehead and cheeks as pale as candlewax.

  In a tight, thin voice she said, “Give me the details. There must be a lot more to it than that.”

  He complied. When he had recited the full story, she shook her head with an incredulous expression.

  “But they must be insane. We need a rest from ultrarapid change, not an extra dose of it. Half the population has given up trying to cope, and the other is punch-drunk without knowing it.”

  “Sweedack,” he said dully. “But of course their defense is that whether or not it’s done here, it’s bound to be done somewhere by somebody, so …” An empty shrug.

  “That’s okay. Maybe the people who come along second will profit from our example; maybe they won’t repeat all our mistakes. But … Don’t the people at Tarnover realize they could reduce our society to hysterics?”

  “Apparently not. It’s a prime example of Porter’s Law, isn’t it? They’ve carried over the attitudes of the arms race into the age of the brain race. They’re trying to multiply incommensurables. You must have heard that applying minimax strategy to the question of rearmament invariably results in the conclusion that you must rearm. And their spiritual ancestors kept right on doing so even after H-bombs had written a factor of infinity into the equation of military power. They sought security by piling up more and more irrelevant weapons. At Tarnover today they’re making the analogous error. They claim to be hunting for the genetic element of wisdom, and I’m sure most of them believe that’s what they’re really doing. They aren’t, of course. What they’re on the track of is the 200-plus IQ. And intelligence and wisdom aren’t the same.”

  He clenched his fists. “The p
rospect terrifies me! They must be stopped. Somehow and at any cost. But I’ve been struggling for six years to think of a way, hoping that the thirty million they lavished on me won’t go completely to waste, and I haven’t achieved one goddamned thing!”

  “Are you held back by fear of being—well, punished?”

  He started. “You’re sharp, aren’t you? I guess I am!”

  “Just for opting out?”

  “Oh, I’ve committed a slew of federal crimes. Used false identities, obtained a notary’s seal by fraud, entered forged data in the continental net … Just take it for granted they could find plenty of reasons for me to go to jail.”

  “I’m surprised they let you get away in the first place.”

  “But they don’t compel where they can persuade. They’re not stupid. They’re aware that one volunteer working his guts out on their behalf is worth a score of reluctant conscripts.”

  Gazing past him into nowhere, she said, “I see. Thinking you were trustworthy, they gave you too much rope. So when you did escape, what did you do?”

  He summarized his careers.

  “Hm! If nothing else, you took in a broad cross-section of society. What made you settle for a post at G2S after all that?”

  “I needed to gain access to some restricted areas of the net. In particular I had to find out whether my code was still valid. Which it was. But now that they’re closing on my identity at KC it’s high time I made one last use of it and rewrote myself again. It costs, of course, but I have some won Delphi tickets to collect on, and I’m sure I can adopt a well-paid profession for the time being. Don’t they go big for mystical things out here? I can run computerized horoscopes, and I can offer gene counseling—I think you can do that in California without a state license—and … Oh, anything that involves use of a computer terminal.”