“My gods!” Didi muttered at the face of Childriss. “This is going to change everything!” With that, he rose and quickly hobbled out of the cafeteria.
* * *
Shortly after that, the Department of Science endured what came to be called the Sorting Lab Incident. A junior scientist in charge of blood samples set aside for studying a particular aspect of the genome claimed that Professor Childriss sent an electronic request for a file that his team needed around noon. The junior scientist swore to the Head that not five minutes after the request was sent, Childriss was already screaming in the hallway outside the lab, verbally assaulting anyone who came near. Childriss claimed that the door to the lab was held shut against him. Whether it was or was not, the door sustained considerable damage, and the researchers in charge of sorting out hard-copy files had to spend the remainder of the day reorganizing everything that Childriss knocked over during his latest fit.
A signed petition - the creators were, ironically enough, anonymous - was sent to the Head of the DoS. It stated that Childriss was a hindrance to the work of the DoS and an enemy of the psychological well-being of any who worked there. But the Department Head cared little for what he called the “political pecking order” of the assistant researchers and junior scientists; he cared about the results that Childriss and his team brought to the work of deciphering the human genome. The Head laughed off another charge that Professor Childriss had threatened to maim a junior scientist. In his estimation Professor Childriss, the man who had been in charge of the team that had isolated all genetic matrices having to do with formation of the human gastrointestinal tract - an incredible feat accomplished far ahead of schedule - simply could not be capable of such base behavior. The Department Head stated that any eccentricities shown by fellow scientists should be met in the spirit of tolerance.
So when Professor Childriss entered the work area of Didi’s team of researchers, his face stern and his eyes cutting through flesh as his head whipped about, everyone instinctively looked away and drew up within themselves. Childriss hung about the “commons” files, where any scientist from any team could look at problems or notes or results not yet treated for electronic record. He flipped through the papers aimlessly, barely looking at them, but each scientist in the room already regretted a few of the things they’d carelessly left in that area. Childriss bore his eyes into one person in particular - tiny Didi, who squinted his eyes at a series of readouts on several monitors around him.
Childriss glared at an assistant researcher, who jerked his face away, then sat down beside Didi and said, “What are you up to?”
“Comparisons,” said Didi, eyes still fixed on the readouts. “We have a sample of a man born with six fingers on both hands. He claims that his grandfather had the same condition. Unfortunately we do not have access to his father. Still, it’s a good chance to compare genes that we know contribute to common bone structures with those that possibly do so only with this individual.”
“They stick you on grunt work?”
“I am only an assistant researcher. But I am very good at things like this.”
“I see,” said Childriss, nodding slowly. He swiveled his chair about so that he could lean on the desk, nearer Didi. Didi looked at him, scrunched up his eyes awkwardly, then picked a pair of glasses up from the desk and held then in the air between himself and Childriss. He squinted harder, set the glasses back down, then said, “I think I remember you. My name is Didi.”
Childriss laughed, wondering why the man would play dumb around someone with his reputation. “Most likely you do. I’m Professor William Childriss. We met in the cafeteria a while back.”
“Oh? Oh.” Didi slowly turned back to his readouts, then marked one sheet with a red pen.
Childriss watched Didi for a long time. He saw an incredible variety of prescription pills on his desk and thought, at first, that they might have something to do with his studies. Surely no man would have to depend on so many pills, but the name Didi was indeed printed on the labels. He wondered if Didi was trying to ignore him, and was only pretending to study until he could be left alone. But suddenly Didi twitched, grabbed up his pen, and neatly circled two chunks of code on two separate readouts. He shook his head, disconcerted by some bit of data, then switched his desk light off and rubbed his eyes with his hands. He glanced up and seemed to notice Childriss for the first. Again he lifted his glasses, looked through them at Childriss without putting them on, and nodded in greeting as he set them down again.
Childriss was impressed that the young man could actually work under the cutting gaze of a man rumored to be a psychopath, so he said, “Would you join me for lunch, Didi?”
“Ah - I cannot,” said Didi. “I cannot eat the food that is offered here, unfortunately. And I have too much to do.” Didi awkwardly moved about in his seat as if to rise; looking down, Childriss saw a complicated metal brace about one leg, an oversized shoe on the other, then glanced across the room and saw a plain paper bag and thermos.
“Please,” said Childriss, “allow me.” He strode across the room and grabbed up the food. A senior scientist sitting nearby jerked his hand away from the table.
“Thank you,” said Didi, taking the food. Childriss resumed his seat and watched him eat.
“Why did you become a scientist? A biologist, in particular.” His voice took on the familiar menacing tone that grated on the nerves of anyone nearby. Didi did not seem to notice.
“I’ve spent my entire life studying all the sciences. I enjoy it immensely. Stacking bits of data and sorting it-”
Childriss laughed loudly, the sound sharp and cruel, and when Didi looked at him inquisitively, Childriss said, “Didi! Nobody speaks like that.”
“I suppose I do. But as I was saying, about data. It seemed to me, as a child, that the world was awash in information. Or that it was pure information. I spent much time in my room. But even occasionally looking out the window would fill me with such confusion and wonder and joy that I would spend an entire day poring through books in order to understand the things I had seen.”
Childriss nodded and watched as Didi removed a small tub of cold oatmeal, ate exactly half of the thing before he resealed it and placed it back in the bag, then removed slices of a green apple and ate half of them, then a block of tofu which he cut in half and ate. It was done very meticulously, but he seemed to concentrate fully on the food as he ate. “What are you thinking about, Didi?”
“Hm? Oh. Absolutely nothing.”
Childriss was downcast. The reply was exactly the same as the common exchange “What’s up?” “Aw, nothin’!” exhibited by coarse buffoons. Didi had only seemed different because his manner of speech was different. The idea that Childriss had allowed himself to be betrayed by human weakness rushed through his blood, and Childriss wondered what the oatmeal would look like splattered across Didi’s bleeding skull...
“I find that it’s best not to dwell on problems during my breaks,” said Didi. “I make a conscious effort to relax my mind. Invariably, by the end of my break, a new course of action or a solution to an old problem will present itself. I assume this has something to do with the mind’s unconscious apparatus.”
Childriss started backward, amazed. Maybe, just maybe, this one was not fit for a petting zoo. “Didi, how do you feel about our work on the human genome?”
“I am greatly excited by it! It is a very demanding task. But, once we are through with this work, we will be able to move on to corrective measures.”
“Corrective... measures? Hah!” Childriss leaned back, forced out, “Hah!” and someone knocked over a stack of files in the far corner of the room. “Didi, do you really suppose that the overeducated dullards here could even conceive of such a notion? They pray for the day when they can be filed away into a grave so that their petty worries will cease hounding them. And the notion that a ‘corrective measure’ can be applied to something like a genome would bring about such a show of righteous indignation tha
t you might make the mistake of thinking that some of these people actually have the capacity for making a complicated moral judgment. Believe me, Didi: Such an idea would make you an outcast among cretins.”
“But why stop there, Childriss? Why work so hard to decipher the human genome at all? Are we doing it just so it can be neatly labeled and catalogued?”
“Most of the scientists are here because it’s their job.”
“Why would they choose it as their job if they weren’t prepared to go as far as they can with it?”
“Who knows?” Childriss looked away from Didi and bore his eyes into the back of another scientist’s head, a reprehensible being who did not deserve the mercy of a swift death. “The human mind, Didi, is a murky mess of contradictions and insubstantial shadows and illusions dressed up as half-formulated truths. Pressing anyone about the true nature of their intentions is like a nightmare for them. Question anyone deeply enough, and they will assume they are being targeted for some kind of joke. They don’t care about truth.”
“Is that why you throw so many tantrums, and make people uncomfortable?”
Childriss laughed. “No. I simply cannot tolerate some forms of behavior. Man’s need to worship other men is tied up with his need to immolate the greatest among them to such a degree that it sickens me. If you found a common bum in the streets and slapped a scientist’s apron on him, you’d be surprised how well he’d fit in here.”
“Now I cannot believe that, Professor Childriss.”
Childriss nodded, both impressed with Didi’s candor and his own idea, which was not half bad. “It would be a good experiment to conduct. When I am Head of the Department, perhaps I will try it out.”
“You, the Head?” Didi chuckled lightly. “Too many people around here hate you for you to ever become Head of the DoS.”
“You still have a lot to learn, Didi. There are things about humans that you can’t learn just by looking at their… hardware.” Childriss gestured towards Didi’s printouts.
“Perhaps. But there’s nothing I can do to improve the software. The hardware - that’s a different matter.”
“So you concentrate your focus on the genome because it’s something that, theoretically, you could manipulate and improve upon?”
“In a matter of speaking, yes.”
“Such focus is very imbalanced, Didi.” Childriss smiled awkwardly; his stern features folded unnaturally.
“And one could argue that your hair-trigger temper and inability to deal with people is also an imbalance. And yet you still aim at being the Head of our organization.”
“Very true! Understand that I did not mean imbalance as a bad thing. It’s fashionable and reasonable to go along with the well-balanced notions of others. I think that both of us are, perhaps, very unreasonable, Didi.”
Didi thought for a long moment, then laughed again. “Well put. Well put!” He placed his food back in its bag, folded the bag, then said, “Please do not offer to put my food away. I see now that I have more work here than I previously thought. I will not leave my desk for a long time. Childriss - I have enjoyed talking with you.”
Childriss smiled again, then stopped the gesture. Just then a man that he despised, a great slouching buffoon among buffoons, capered about the doorway and made a great show of moving toward the “commons” files. This man was most likely illiterate and even now was only copying movements he had seen others perform. Reflexively, Childriss whirled and shouted, “You! Out of my sight!”
The junior scientist leaped to the side, blinked wildly at Childriss, and scampered away. Childriss noticed that Didi cringed, and held a hand up to his ear. Childriss leaned forward, confused.
“My ears,” whispered Didi. “They are... very... sensitive.”
“Didi - I am sorry. I did not know.” Childriss’s face contorted in anger, and his heart burned in the acid churned up by his gut. “It will not happen again, my friend.”
“Think nothing of it,” said Didi, smiling slightly.
“I must attend to something.”
Childriss left and entered the hallway.
Didi felt a great surge of happiness. He only had one friend, a man who was not a scientist, but with whom he could openly speak and be understood. But with Childriss, it might even be possible to discuss matters of biology that would not seem completely outlandish or abrasively esoteric. He turned back to his work, but his smile remained for a long time.
In the hallway, Childriss felt such a great blast of fury at himself for his mishandling of the situation that he grinded his knuckles against a wall and scraped them along as he walked. An assistant researcher entered the hall, saw the fire burning behind Childriss’s eyes, and immediately returned to his room and shut the door.
* * *
Didi’s team of fellow assistant researchers, junior scientists, and even the coordinating senior scientist often shunned him after his talks with Professor Childriss, as if the man’s volatility could influence Didi’s quiet demeanor. Didi did not mind. But to his surprise, he found that not everyone feared Childriss. There were some that Childriss interacted with almost amiably, usually scientists who took their work seriously to the extent that they were unmindful of the political climate of the DoS. They were usually biologists who took to the human genome project with relish rather than apprehension or stoic endurance. Childriss even introduced Didi to a few physicists, despite the fact that Childriss was banned from ever entering that section of the DoS due to past outbursts. The physicists on good terms with Childriss claimed that an indivisible atom could be divided, by force, and that more energy could be gleaned from a reactor based on their work than all the coal-burning energy plants in Haven combined. Didi could readily understand the concepts these physicists talked about, which surprised Childriss greatly. Didi was excited to meet with others and discuss theories that hadn’t been published yet, and he was grateful that Childriss was able to look past his official rank of “assistant researcher” and treated him, instead, as a youth with great potential.
Didi learned that the hierarchy of the DoS extended into invisible areas beyond office research teams. Didi had no problems with his official work and his official research team, but he hungered for the camaraderie of the intellectual elite and their subtle, invisible circle. As for Childriss, he completed his official duties with ease - with such ease, in fact, that on a very deep level he despised the men who struggled with their day-to-day work and depended on the gentle tyranny of the official hierarchy. It was plain to him that even the DoS was infected with the bureaucratic notion that men should be rewarded for their length of employment rather than brilliant work.
Still, no one except Didi actually considered Childriss their friend. Even the brilliant scientists that Childriss met with were not above his volatile nature. On many occasions their nightly talks were disrupted and ruined by Childriss’s loud proclamations that some man among them was an imbecile, a “retard in sheep’s clothing,” or a spy sent among them by base dullards. On at least one occasion Childriss had to be restrained by force. Whenever a circle was broken in this manner, Childriss would inevitably find Didi at his home and, tearful and full of rage, would plead with his friend to not allow the perversions of cretins to infect him, and would claim that they must make an alliance against them - or else all future generations would damn them. Didi would quietly implore his friend to remain calm, then would send him away with an order to sleep or meditate. Invariably, come Monday morning, Childriss would behave as if the psychotic break had never happened.
One afternoon Childriss came to Didi’s workstation and, smiling strangely, asked if Didi would join him for a moment.
Didi agreed and the two walked. Didi creaked along very slowly. While Childriss did not slow his usual maniacally brisk pace, he often stopped before and behind his friend and glared at passers-by so that Didi could keep up. They walked for a long time and came to a strange section of the DoS. Childriss led Didi to an unlit area, then opened a door fr
om which hung a broken, old-fashioned lock, and led him up a long and winding stairwell. Didi then remembered that the Department of Science was a very old structure, and that whole parts of it must have been abandoned even as new sections were dug out of the earth.
They came to a circular steel room lit by a wide curving window covered in a layer of dust. A square section wiped free of dust opened onto a view of pure blue sky. Didi covered his eyes just as Childriss handed him his sunglasses, for he had guessed that his friend would most likely forget them. Didi put them on and approached the window. The chamber of steel was built into the side of a mountain. There was an avenue below where people milled about. Far away, he could see the gray buildings of the Ministerial Sector and, beyond that, the gray hills that formed the far side of the ring of mountains. Didi thought that it was very beautiful and smiled at his friend in appreciation.
“I come here often,” said Childriss. “To clear my head, to be away from others.”
Didi craned his head. “There is another avenue directly beneath us!”
“They cannot see us. They cannot hear us.”
“Are you sure?”
“It is wholly soundproof. I know for a fact that it is soundproof.”
Didi thought for a moment, then said, “Do you mean that... that we do not even see the worst of your temper?”
Childriss lowered his face slightly, then turned away.
“Do not worry,” said Didi, quietly. “I will tell no one of your sanctuary.”
Childriss sucked in a hard breath. How Didi could seem so naive, and then, at times like this, know exactly what was at the heart of the matter, was beyond him. Childriss knew in that moment that he had brought Didi here exactly because he wanted his friend to betray their trust. He would have said nothing to Didi about the sanctity of this room. And then, when Didi had told others, or even taken them there, Childriss could invoke their unspoken understanding, could have railed at his friend for the betrayal, and thus prove his image of the world as a wholly distrustful place, a thing to guard oneself against. Only Didi had not betrayed him yet; only Didi was a problem, a variable that did not fit. Only Didi was a friend.
Demonworld Book 5: Lords of the Black Valley (Demonworld series) Page 4
