“Of course. But in that case—” the captain paused, scratching his right hand with his left— “why locate such an establishment here? Why not in Stockholm or one of the other cities?”
“Could such vast natural caves be found in a city?” Miss Brunner waved a hand back at the cavern.
“Would it be possible for me to contact my superiors whilst you are checking with yours?”
“Out of the question. It is a puzzle to me that you are in this area.”
“We believe that an Englishman and his wife—” He stopped short, staring for the first time at Jerry.
“Bugger me, why didn’t we think of that?” said Jerry under his breath.
“But this is the Englishman,” said the captain. His hand went to his holster.
“I was not brought here by force, captain,” said Jerry hurriedly. “I was contacted by your government to help…”
“That is unlikely, sir.” The captain drew his revolver. “If that were the case, we should have been notified.”
The four technicians who had brought the policemen in were unarmed, and so were Jerry and Miss Brunner. Apart from that, they were evenly matched, six against six. Miss Brunner’s tough boys were out of earshot. Things looked dicey.
“An oversight surely, captain?” Miss Brunner’s delivery was a bit rough now.
“I cannot believe that.”
“I don’t blame you, frankly,” said Jerry, noting that only the captain had actually drawn his gun. The rest of them were still trying to catch up on what was happening.
Jerry’s body was full of power.
He jumped for the gun. Two yards.
The gun went off once before he had disarmed the captain and covered the surprised policemen.
“You had better take over, Miss Brunner.” Jerry’s voice was thick. From inordinate energy he had sunk to exhaustion, dizziness. As she took the gun from him and covered the Swedes, he glanced down.
The bullet seemed to have entered his chest just above the heart. Loss of blood.
“Oh, no. I think I’m going to die. Mum?”
In the distance, Miss Brunner’s tough boys came running. He heard Miss Brunner shouting orders, felt her arm supporting him. He seemed to be growing heavier and heavier, sinking through the stone.
Was it muffled gunfire he heard? Was it hopeful imagination that made him think he caught the sound of Miss Brunner’s voice saying “There is still a chance—but we must work rapidly”?
His mass became greater than that of the stone, and he found he could walk through it with some difficulty, like pushing through air that had the consistency of thin, liquid tar.
He wondered if it were tar and if he would be found in millions of years perfectly preserved. He pushed on, knowing that this theory was stupid.
At length he emerged into the open, feeling light and fit.
He stood on a plain without a horizon. Far, far away he could make out a huge crowd of people gathered round a rostrum on which stood a single still figure. He heard the faint sound of voices and began to walk towards the crowd.
As he got closer, he recognised that the crowd, thousands strong, consisted of all Miss Brunner’s scientists and technicians. Miss Brunner was on the rostrum addressing them.
No-one noticed him as he stopped at the back of the crowd and listened to her speech.
“You have all been waiting for the time when I would describe the ultimate purpose of DUEL. The biologists and neurologists may have guessed—and then decided that their guesses were too incredible and dismissed them. But they were right. I do not believe that our project can fail—unless Mr Cornelius should die, which now seems unlikely—”
Jerry was relieved.
“—and I believe in it sufficiently to be, with Mr Cornelius, the raw material.”
Jerry worked out that he must be experiencing some sort of hallucination crossed with reality. The vision was dream; the words were actually being spoken. He tried to haul himself out of the dream but failed.
“DUEL’s purpose was twofold, as you know. The first job was to feed it the sum total of human knowledge in one comprehensive integral equation. This was at last achieved three days ago, and I congratulate you.
“It is the second part that mystified most of you. The technical problem of how to feed this programme directly into a human brain was overcome with the help of notes donated by Dr Leslie Baxter, the psychobiologist. But what sort of brain could accept such a fantastic programme? That question is answered as I answer the question you have all been asking. DUEL’s ultimate use is to satisfy an aim which, whether we realised it or not, has been the ultimate aim of all human endeavour since Homo sapiens first evolved. It is a simple aim and we are near achieving it. We have been working, ladies and gentlemen, to produce an all-purpose human being! A human being equipped with total knowledge, hermaphrodite in every respect—self-fertilising and thus self-regenerating—and thus immortal, re-creating itself over and over again, retaining its knowledge and adding to it. In short, ladies and gentlemen, we are creating a being that our ancestors would have called a god!”
The scene wavered, and Jerry heard the words less clearly.
“The conditions in modern Europe proved ideal for this project—ideal in every respect—and I believe that we succeed now or never. I have destroyed my notes. The necessary equipment has been constructed. Bring Mr Cornelius forward, please.”
Jerry felt himself being lifted up and floated through the ghostly crowd.
He drifted behind Miss Brunner as she walked away towards a large oval metal chamber. Then they were inside it together, in darkness. Miss Brunner began to make gentle love to him. He felt her, closer and closer, drawing into him. It was like the dream he had had before.
Deliciously he felt himself merge with Miss Brunner, and he still wondered if this, too, were a dream inspired by his wound. And yet his body had breasts and two sets of genitals, and it seemed very real and very natural that this should be so. Then he felt tiny pricks of pain in his skull, and his memories and Miss Brunner’s, his identity and hers, merged for a moment and then slowly dispersed until his mind was blanked out and DUEL began to do its stuff.
17
The technician looked sharply at his watch. Then he looked at the metal chamber and at the dials thereon. Every dial was now still. Slowly, a green light blinked on and off.
“This is it,” said the technician crisply to another technician very like him.
The chamber had been rolled on casters close to DUEL. The great semicircle of the computer was joined by a huge semicircle of scientists and technicians, making a full circle.
A spotlight had been turned on the oval chamber. Scientists came forward to check that the indicators all registered correctly. They backed off, satisfied.
The middle-aged dietician who had won the honour through an elaborate draw spun the handle of the chamber.
* * *
A tall, naked, graceful being stepped out. It had Miss Brunner’s hair and Mr Cornelius’s eyes. Miss Brunner’s predatory jaw was softened by Jerry’s ascetic mouth. It was hermaphrodite and beautiful.
The scientists and technicians murmured in awe, and some of them began to clap and whistle. Others cheered and stamped.
“Hi, fans!” said Cornelius Brunner.
The cavern reverberated with a massive shout of exultation. The scientists and technicians capered about, clapping one another on the back, grinning, dancing.
They surged towards their smiling creation, lifted it high, and began to march round the computer singing a wordless victorious chant which became a christening name:
“Cor-nee-lee-us Ber-un-ner!”
Cornelius Brunner was making a big scene.
“Just call me Corn,” it grinned, and it blew kisses to one and all.
Distantly at first, growing louder, a siren or two began to sound.
Corn cocked an ear. “The enemy is at our gates!” It pointed a slender finger towards the outer cavern. “F
orward!”
Lifted on a rolling tide of its jubilant sycophants, many thousands strong, Cornelius Brunner sat on their shoulders as they flooded forward.
Across the great hall of the hot lake, up the slope towards the cave mouth, onward they moved, their roaring thunderous, their exhilarated bodies swift.
The door of the cave opened for them, and they rushed into the open air. Cornelius Brunner laughed as it rode their backs.
A small detachment of military was there. A few light guns and armoured cars.
The tide did not notice as the soldiers first backed away and then tried to run and then were engulfed, guns and cars and all, as the huge crowd coursed ahead in triumph.
Cornelius Brunner pointed to the south-west. “That way—to Finland first!”
The flow changed direction but not its speed, and away it went in its entirety.
It streamed over the border, it swarmed down the length of Finland, it flocked through Germany, and it gathered greater and greater numbers as it moved on, Cornelius Brunner high in the centre, encouraging it, urging it, praising it. The thousands became millions as the new messiah was borne across the continent, whole cities abandoned and the land crushed in its wake.
The vast swarm reached Belgium and, at its controller’s behest, decimated Liège, depopulated Brussels, and carried half a nation with it when it crossed into France.
Its exuberant voice could be heard a hundred miles from Paris. The reverberation of its feet could be felt two hundred miles away. The aura of its presence rippled outward over the world.
The millions did not march along—they danced along. Their voice was one melodious song. Their densely packed mass covered fifty square miles or more, increasing all the time.
“To Paris!” cried Cornelius Brunner, and to Paris they went. Not once did they pause, aside from those who died from excitement.
Paris was passed, and its four remaining inhabitants gathered to watch the disappearing deluge.
“Unprecedented!” murmured the Chief of State, scratching his nose.
“Perhaps, perhaps,” said his secretary.
The tide rolled on and roared through Rome, leaving the Pope, its sole resident, sunk in meditation and speculation. After some time, the Pope hurried from the Vatican Palace and caught up within an hour.
All the great cities of Italy. All the great cities of Spain and Portugal. All the cities of the Russian Empire.
And then, with a slight note of boredom in its voice, Cornelius Brunner gave the last order.
“To the sea!”
Down to the coast, onto the beaches, and tide met tide as the gigantic assemblage poured into the Black Sea.
Within six hours, only one head remained above water. Naturally, it was the head of Cornelius Brunner, swimming strongly towards a beach near Byzantium.
Cornelius Brunner stretched out on the well-churned sand and relaxed. The waves lapped the peaceful shore, and a few birds cruised the blue sky.
“This is the life,” yawned Cornelius Brunner, whose skull contained the sum of human knowledge. “I think I might as well kip down here as anywhere.”
Cornelius Brunner fell asleep, alone on an abandoned beach.
Night fell and morning followed, and it awoke.
“Where now?” it mused.
“To Normandy. There’s some unfinished business.”
“To Normandy, then, and the House of Cornelius.”
It rose, flexed its body, turned, and loped inland over the quiet, deserted countryside.
TERMINAL DATA
The world’s first all-purpose human being tucked the detonator under its arm and walked slowly backward, unwinding the wires that led to the cellar of the house. At a safe distance it set the box down and pulled up the plunger.
“Five!”
“Four!”
“Three!”
“Two!”
“One!”
Cornelius Brunner pressed the plunger, and the great fake Le Corbusier château split, flared and boomed. Gouts of flame and smoke erupted from it. The cliffside trembled, rubble flew, and the flames roared high, the black smoke hanging low and drifting down to obscure the village.
Arms folded, head set back, Cornelius Brunner contemplated the burning wreckage.
It sighed.
“That’s that.”
“Nice and tidy.”
“Yes.”
“What now?”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps the Middle East first.”
“Or America?”
“No, not just yet, I think.”
“I need some money. America might be the best place to get it.”
“I feel like going East. There is still work to be done.”
“The rainy season will have begun in Cambodia.”
“Yes; I think I might as well walk, don’t you?”
“There’s plenty of time. Don’t want to hurry.”
Cornelius Brunner turned and looked down the slope of the cliff, turned again and looked back at the guttering house, looked out to sea, looked at the sky. “Ho hum.”
A man, unshaven, clad in a ragged uniform, was panting up the slope. He called. “Monsieur—ah!”
“Monsieur-Madame,” Cornelius Brunner corrected politely.
“Are you responsible for this destruction?”
“Indirectly, yes.”
“There is still some law left in the land!”
“Here and there.”
“I intend to arrest you!”
“I am beyond arresting.”
“Beyond?” The official frowned.
Cornelius Brunner moved in. It began to stroke the official’s arm.
“What’s the time, monsieur? My watch has stopped.”
The official glanced at his wrist, exposed by a tear in his sleeve. “Ah! Mine also!”
“Too bad.” Cornelius Brunner looked into his eyes.
A sweet and gentle smile crossed his lips, and he flushed in ecstatic fascination while Cornelius Brunner removed his trousers.
The trousers were flung away. Cornelius Brunner turned the official round, smacked his bottom, gave him a gentle pat on the back, and sent him running back down the slope. He ran joyously, the smile still on his face, his ragged jacket and shirt-tails flapping.
A moment later, the world’s first all-purpose human being strode eastward, whistling.
“A tasty world,” it reflected cheerfully. “A very tasty world.”
“You said it, Cornelius!”
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THE ETERNAL CHAMPION SERIES
The Eternal Champion
Phoenix in Obsidian
The Dragon in the Sword
THE CORUM SERIES
The Knight of the Swords
The Queen of the Swords
The King of the Swords
The Bull and the Spear
The Oak and the Ram
The Sword and the Stallion
THE CORNELIUS QUARTET
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TITAN BOOKS
The Final Programme Page 17
