Asimov's SF, January 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  But I'd mentioned being tired, and as if to prove me right, I was suddenly aware of my own endless fatigue. “I'd rather go upstairs and nap.”

  He glanced at his watch, a look of relief revealed.

  “Perhaps so,” he agreed.

  “Will you come get me in an hour?”

  “I shall, Mr. Betters.”

  But of course I didn't sleep. I lay awake, painfully aware of the brilliant sunshine pushing around the curtains of my room. This wasn't a natural time for slumber, and I accomplished nothing except feeling wearier than before. Then just as I closed my eyes—the moment that I could feel sleep take me—knuckles began to strike my room door.

  * * * *

  What I was selling isn't important. In fact, several elements of this story are best left dressed in harmless falsehoods. Imagine several men and one woman sitting at the long table, all of them interested in American refrigerators or computers or interactive toys. What matters is that my wares weren't simple, and Europe represented a huge potential market. One difficulty is that I'm not a salesman by trade. My normal duties are to manage those responsible for designing what I consider to be the best products of their kind in the world. Which was why my enthusiasm couldn't be faked. Despite my various liabilities, I was a good spokesman for my company, offering my audience a long-term relationship full of shared profits and room for mutual growth.

  At least two guests spoke English. But everyone paid close attention while Claude turned my boastings into what was beginning to sound like real words, no matter how little of the noise made sense to me.

  The man in charge knew English quite well. He was gray-haired and well dressed and probably distinguished on his worse day. With small winks and the occasional smile, he implied that he approved of what he was hearing, both from me and from Claude. In those thirty minutes, I turned from Mr. Betters into, “My friend, Kyle.” But just when I felt success was assured, a young fellow at the patriarch's side leaned forward and burst into some long tirade.

  Claude listened. Both of us listened. And then the one who understood turned to the other, saying, “He wants to know why this is fair? The percentages are wrong. He claims that...” Claude hesitated for an instant, struggling for the best words. And by “best,” I mean that he needed honest words that wouldn't leave me furious. “He believes you are forcing an unfair burden on them.”

  “How can that be?” I asked Claude.

  Claude turned and repeated that in French. But of course everyone could read my body and the tone of my voice.

  Touching his headstrong young colleague, the patriarch leaned forward. In perfect English, with a deep, clear voice, he admitted, “These are difficult days, Kyle. The tensions are felt by all of us, you know.”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “It is sad.”

  I kept agreeing with him.

  Then he told me, “I'm not a political soul.”

  Which made him just like me.

  “Unlike my associates, I remember the liberation of France. I was a boy, yes, but I still remember the Nazis fleeing, and I know that joy felt by every Frenchman when your shabby-dressed soldiers entered Paris.” He nodded, eyes staring into the past. “It's a fair statement to point out that no other nation, given your tools and circumstances, would have so gladly fought two wars against such distant enemies. If you wished, you could have fortified your continent, built bombers and missiles, and then littered the world with your nuclear weapons. You could have broken your enemies and their collaborators too and been done with the mess.”

  And now he wasn't like me. His praise buoyed me, yes. I couldn't help my emotions. But his words and cold logic made me uneasy.

  “And I do respect what the United States achieved after the war,” he continued. “This has not been an easy task—”

  The lone woman interrupted. She was tall and elegantly beautiful, in her middle thirties but with a younger woman's perfect complexion. She knew exactly what her boss had said, and that's why she erupted into a quick rain of hot words and slicing hand gestures.

  Expecting her response, the patriarch acted untroubled. When she finished, he spoke to her and the others, perhaps warning his people to behave. (I assume this because Claude translated nothing.) Then while the young people gnashed their teeth and whispered among themselves, the patriarch turned his warm certain gaze back to me. “To maintain your nuclear monopoly ... well, it is an astonishing achievement. Granted, we have helped you in your cause. We are your allies, after all. No overt threats were necessary for us to open our borders and our military bases to your radiological police, and we have given you much help, particularly with the Soviets and the Indians.”

  Again, the youngsters grumbled and sneered.

  The patriarch paused, weighing me with his eyes. For just a moment, he acted disappointed. Was it my expression or my silence? Either way, he sat back on the hard restaurant chair before saying the same word twice, in French and then in English.

  “Peace,” he uttered.

  I nodded, pretending to understand his implication.

  “Peace is a precious thing. And, as I say, almost any other power, given your tools, might have tried to enslave this world.”

  The woman had had enough. She stood, and with a delicious accent said, “Bullshit. Bullshit to that.”

  I felt as if I'd been slapped.

  “This isn't about uranium,” she told her boss. “Maybe at first it was. Maybe when the war was finished and everyone was happy, they were good stewards for the world. But these Americans ... they do more than keep others from making atomic bombs.” She turned to me, her face flushed. “He says you're honorable. I say you're sneaky and subtle and tenacious and bloodless. Like machines, you and your people keep pursuing every advantage, and what happens in the end? We surrender more and more to the United States. Because every new technology is a threat, and you believe you can make our world safe.”

  At that point, I laughed.

  It was a mistake, and I knew it before the sound exploded from me. But a secret pride had been insulted, and sitting back in my chair, I repeated that line that I'd heard since I was a child:

  “'Somebody has to be in charge.'”

  There. It was said, and no apology could take back that sentiment.

  Claude was first to react. With a tight, furious voice, he said, “What about genetics? By what right should you have a monopoly on DNA?”

  “What about biological weapons?” I replied.

  My question was translated, and the response was nervous laughter. Only the patriarch and Claude didn't cackle at my paranoid suspicions.

  “What do you think?” Claude pressed. “That if you let us toy with microbes and crops, we'd brew up plagues that would kill only Americans?”

  Really, I hadn't thought for two minutes about our policy toward bacteria. But hundreds of hours of overheard news commentaries gave me the language to say, “The Soviets tried just that. When I was a boy, in the early sixties, they built that secret lab in the Urals and started to weaponize—”

  I hesitated. This was probably the first time in my life that I had said that peculiar word. “Weaponize,” I said again. Then I said, “Anthrax and smallpox and Ebola,” with the certainty of a clinical biochemist.

  “I'm not talking about disease,” the woman insisted. “I'm talking about those miracle crops of yours, the biogenetic soybeans and tomatoes and rice. If a field isn't under your control, it's forbidden. If your precious seeds are lost, your spies and satellites track down the thieves, burning every field that shows any sign of your trademarked plants.”

  “That's not my decision,” I managed.

  Yet most of the table seemed to think that I was the president and Congress too, sitting before them in some kind of court proceeding.

  Claude offered a few slow words to the others. Judging by the tone, he was trying to calm spirits.

  But it took the patriarch to regain control of the meeting. He leaned forward, silencing th
e others. Something important was coming, no doubt about it. He shook his head as if it were heavy and looked at the others, and in French, he told his associates, “Of course it cannot hold, these taboos. These constrictions. Seeds will sprout and thrive, and there aren't enough eyes in the sky to keep all of the American secrets safely their own.”

  I knew what he said because Claude, remembering his job, hunched down and translated every word.

  Then the old man looked at me. One apolitical soul to another, he said, “But you see, Kyle. My friend. This is the problem that I face. These emotions are ragged and unpleasant. And not just with my staff, but with our stockholders too. I wish to do business with you. I believe what you offer is respectable and fair, and I take no offense. But I am not this company, only its servant. I'm sorry that you saw this display today, but at least now you will appreciate my reasons when I tell you no. I will thank you for your time, and on the behalf of everyone, I wish you the best. A safe, uneventful flight back to your homeland, and good day to you.”

  * * * *

  Like most twelve-year-old boys, my favorite movies usually involved World War II. Battles and tremendous explosions were my passion, and it didn't hurt having brave men not even twice my age doing fearless, selfless acts. New releases were cause for celebration. My father would treat my brothers and me to a matinee, and afterward we'd wrestle our way back to the car, arguing about which scene was best and which soldiers we wanted to be like. Classic films were an excuse to gather around the black-and-white RCA, two wondrous hours spent watching the slaughter of Japs and Krauts. It seemed like such good fun, even when I was old enough to know that war was a truly awful business.

  I had limits, too: I never much liked the atomic bomb movies. The best of that bad lot was the Hiroshima epic, directed by William Wyler, starring Charlton Heston as Paul Tibbets. Despite my love for large explosions, I considered mushroom clouds to be more forces of nature than tools of war. Besides, I wasn't an unthinking monster, and the effects of the blast and radiation were bad enough to stave off any wide-eyed pleasure with that impossibly bright flash of light.

  My father was an Alfred Hitchcock fan. With the excuse of an education, he took us to see the classic Intrigue. But the movie's charms and subtle power were slow to work their way into my flesh. Espionage was a difficult species of warfare. Dad had to explain quite a lot to his boys, including how the Soviets had placed spies in the heart of the Manhattan Project and how a pair of intelligence officers achieved miracles, rooting out the bastards before any damage could be done.

  “If those heroes hadn't done their jobs,” he warned, “our world would be a very different place today.”

  “Different how?” I asked.

  We were walking back to the car. “Our enemies would have stolen our atomic bomb,” he said grimly, emphasizing that stealing element. Political systems aside, his sons were brought up to believe that thieves were cowards and worse. “And without our spy-busters working in the shadows, the Communists would have gotten the hydrogen bomb too.”

  “What's the difference?” my youngest brother asked. “Between atomic ... and what's the word...?”

  “Hydrogen,” I told him, using my smart, twelve-year-old voice. “Hydrogen bombs are much, much worse.”

  “They're just bigger,” Dad corrected. “A weapon isn't good or bad. It just is. What makes it evil is how it is used.”

  “Have we ever used H-bombs?” asked my other brother.

  “Three times,” Dad allowed. “Only three times. And they hopefully won't be needed again.”

  “But we have them,” I added confidently.

  “And we keep them at the ready,” he allowed. “Warheads on missiles, bombs in bombers, and there's always at least one nuclear submarine hiding in the ocean, ready to fire its payload on a moment's notice.”

  This was all good and reasonable, in other words. And with that, we let the topic drop, getting back to the important business of wrestling our way to the car.

  When I was in college, The Good Hand came to one theatre. I knew nothing about the little film, except that it was set in some bizarre future New York City. My girlfriend had read a favorable review and we went together, but she wasn't a very strong person. The filth and disease and easy deaths of that first half hour proved too much. Leaning close, she demanded that we leave. And since I was hoping for sex, either that night or in my own near future, I did the gracious thing.

  The title, The Good Hand, remained a small mystery. It wasn't until eight or nine years later, living in a large city with an art house movie theatre, I finally watched that violent nightmare to its conclusion. The director, Martin Scorsese, did very little work after The Good Hand, and it was easy to see why. His hypothetical world was brutal and suffocating. Powerful, faceless entities controlled every aspect of knowledge. Books were kept under lock and key, even the least sensitive titles subject to layers upon layers of restrictions and bureaucratic hoops.

  The story was preposterous, yet after the first frames, utterly believable. The protagonist was a young fellow who wanted nothing but to make a better spaghetti sauce. That's all. The twentieth century was famous for its delicious sauces, and wanting to know more about tomatoes and basil and garlic and sausage, he filled out the appropriate forms. But one box on the backside of one page was checked when he should have left it empty, and his request was dropped into a much more dangerous pile of forms.

  At that point, a brutal comedy took flight. One tiny misunderstanding caused people to die, while others barely survived. The young chef lost friends and family, and he had to kill two strangers and avoid a fast-moving car before the pursing intelligence officer finally caught him.

  “This is a sad, essential business,” the officer explained to his prisoner. “If a citizen believes he can reach for any title, to slake any intellectual thirst, how do we keep our grip on society?”

  “Why do we need any grip?” the bloodied but valiant hero responded. “Can't people do what they want? Can't they learn what they want ... just so long as it doesn't hurt anyone...?”

  Played by a young De Niro, the intelligence officer was an intoxicating mixture of acid and charm. He laughed for a few moments. Then with grave certainty, he said, “You don't know the dangers waiting in these old texts. And I don't know much about them either. But I'm one tough bastard, and what I do know scares me. The bombs and poisons that you could make up in your kitchen ... well, I'd do anything to protect my world from those horrors. And every time I meet someone naive, someone like you, it reminds me. Inside each of us, there's a fatal flaw. We suffer from a crazy urge that keeps us chasing every bit of knowledge, including nightmares that can doom our species and our world.”

  The young Al Pacino played the would-be cook. “Are you crazy? This is about spaghetti sauce,” he screamed. “That's all I want to know!”

  “Not according to these forms,” his opponent countered.

  “I made a mistake,” Pacino swore, and not for the first time.

  “No,” his nemesis replied. “You used the system against us. You put your mark in that box to allow your nose where it didn't belong. Your plan was clever, and you had this ingenious excuse waiting. In case an official more gullible than me happened to grab your case.”

  “You aren't listening to me,” the prisoner complained.

  “I've heard every word,” the interrogator promised. “And now what you need to do is pay attention when I tell you this: The past is forbidden. There are things that can't be revealed. Certainly not to the likes of you.”

  “What about you?”

  “Oh, I'm not worthy, either,” the officer replied, laughing aside even the suggestion of special treatment. Then from a shelf where important tools were kept, he pulled down a steel cleaver of obvious heft and sharpness. “Regardless what you think, I'm not a monster. I have mercy, and I genuinely want to let you off with a warning. So tell me now. Be honest. Which one is your good hand?”

  “My what?”
>
  “Which hand do you cook with?”

  The hero was right-handed—a point made several times in the narrative. But he was a clever sort, having the presence of mind to lift his left hand as far as the shackles allowed.

  “Very well,” said the officer, smiling with a professional coolness. Then he turned to two nameless fellows waiting in the shadows. “Hold the right wrist,” he instructed. “Hold it very tight now.”

  As the cleaver rose, the hero shouted, “Not that hand, no!”

  “Then you should have answered differently,” was the response. And at least one member of the audience—an apolitical sort on his best day—grimaced and curled up tight, fending off the blows that came only in his imagination.

  * * * *

  Following the Great Lunch Disaster, I retreated to my room and called home, leaving a very sorry report on the office answering machine. I was exhausted, and with an evening event with another French firm scheduled, I stripped and collapsed under the covers, drifting into a wonderful, dreamless sleep.

  Noises woke me.

  First came the precise knocking on wood, and then a loud, uncomfortable voice saying my name.

  Sitting up, I assumed I was late for my appointment. Clumsy apologies preceded the realization that Claude wasn't speaking. In fact, it was a woman's voice. I coughed, muttered, “Just a minute,” and managed to put one leg into my pants before finding enough curiosity to ask the obvious question:

  “Who is it?”

  “Noelene.”

  “Oh.” Why did I know that name? My mind saw the woman at lunch, but that seemed unlikely. My memory was playing games with me. “Just a moment,” I begged, fastening my pants and buttoning my shirt halfway before realizing that I hadn't lined up the buttons and holes properly. Fine. I reached for the door regardless, and that was when another possibility occurred to me. Noelene was a sweet voice standing in the hallway, flanked by a pair of French thugs, the three of them ready to rob the vulnerable American.

  No peephole had been bored into the heavy old door. I left the chain attached, and with my foot serving as a second line of defense, I looked through the tiniest gap.