It was some moments before Charlie turned his gaze back to Control. When he did, there were tears in his eyes. “What have you done?” he asked in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “What have you done?”
“Something that evolution wouldn’t have accomplished in a million years, left to itself,” Control replied calmly. “You’re custom-built, Charlie, a hero for our time. The trouble with James Bond and all the rest of them is they only exist in books and movies. We need them here and now, in the real world, doing what we ordinary mortals can’t.”
“But not asking questions. Just following orders, not thinking too much—right?”
Control tipped his head to one side in an amiable and unashamed acknowledgment of the charge. “Right, Charlie. We want you thinking, but only up to a point. Defining that point is turning out to be quite tricky. You’ve already gone a step or two beyond what would have been ideal.”
Charlie looked at him for a moment, thinking how little he knew this man. Perhaps all men. Then he asked, “Am I the only one?”
“For now. As I told you, you’re the prototype. It’s early days.”
The cage and its occupants had been forgotten for the time being. Charlie had turned away, but not stepped back. Suddenly, without warning, the male—his father, if Control was to be believed—elbowed the female aside and aimed a vicious blow at Charlie’s head. Only some inhumanly swift reflex saved him from injury, and he realized in that instant that Control had spoken the truth: He wasn’t human; he couldn’t be. He spun away, more shaken by what he had just learned about himself than by the ferocity of the attack.
The male chimp, sensing that he’d won some kind of victory, began to leap and chatter around the cage, then took to swinging on the bars and shaking them with macho glee.
Charlie watched him with a strange and awful fascination, then he heard Control behind him. “Come on, Charlie,” he said, and there was a hint of sympathy in his voice now, “I think you’ve seen enough. Let’s go.”
Five minutes later they were back in Charlie’s cell, seated as before.
“How long are you going to keep me here?” Charlie asked.
“Not long, I hope. I’ve just got to persuade certain people that you’ll behave reasonably if we let you out. I’m sure you understand.”
“As long as you’ve got that zapper I don’t have much choice, do I?”
Control gave another of his faintly wan smiles and crossed his legs in his habitual way, ankle on adjacent knee. “No, you don’t. But we’d rather your good behavior was voluntary. You understand that, don’t you?”
Charlie got to his feet and gave a bitter laugh. “Understand!” He began pacing back and forth, all the time running a hand through his hair as though the movement would somehow help clear his mind. “You’re telling me my whole childhood never happened—the orphanage, none of it. Until the Farm.”
“That’s right, Charlie.”
“But where was I all that time?”
“You were in a lab. In this building, as a matter of fact. In a specially designed harness developed from something invented over half a century ago by an American psychologist, B. F. Skinner. It allowed you to grow and develop physically quite normally—in fact rather better than normally. At the same time, using the VR techniques you’re now familiar with, we gave you a carefully scripted life experience that primed you for the future we had planned for you. A team of psychologists worked on every detail.”
“To create a psychopath.”
“To create you, Charlie. Do you think of yourself as a psychopath?”
“I don’t know what I think. I’m not even sure anymore if I think at all.”
“Oh, you think all right. There’s never been any question about that. You’re a highly intelligent individual. The only problem we encountered was with your visual memory. We’d planted information—people, places, and events—but we couldn’t plant the pictures to go with them. That was a problem we had to overcome—not because it was essential in your case, you were already up and running—but because we knew we’d need to do it in the future. As I told you, you’re our prototype.”
Charlie stopped pacing and turned to look at Control, who sat back looking up at him. Control had, Charlie noticed, one hand hooked loosely on his ankle, and the other in his pocket where the zapper was.
“Dr. Flemyng had been developing some very interesting techniques in the treatment of brain-damaged patients,” Control continued in the same amiable, matter-of-fact tone he’d been using all along, “techniques that we’d found considerable application for over several years. Eventually we persuaded her to collaborate with us more closely. It was Dr. Flemyng who gave a face to your memory of Kathy. That was a big step forward.”
Charlie looked puzzled. “But she gave Kathy her own face? Why?”
Control shrugged. “That was her decision. Kathy was obviously someone you’d have to meet, and I daresay Dr. Flemyng thought she could observe your responses herself better than anyone else could.”
Charlie rubbed a hand over the side of his face and around the back of his neck, as though having cleared his brain he was now trying to absorb what he was hearing. Control shifted slightly on his chair, lifting his ankle from his knee and recrossing his legs knee over knee. His hand, however, remained in the pocket of his jacket.
“What we hadn’t anticipated,” Control continued, “was your switch of loyalties. But even that furnished useful information. We knew you functioned on an operational level with great reliability. The question was, how far could that reliability be pushed before it buckled? We knew you wouldn’t crack under physical torture—at least not until long after any human agent would have cracked. But we didn’t know how you’d resist emotional pressure.”
Charlie was pacing again, pacing and turning, still running a hand over his head and neck.
“But she came back.”
“Control frowned, puzzled. “Came back? How do you mean “came back’?”
“Kathy. Dr. Flemyng. When I was wired up to think I was a chimpanzee, she came back, she talked to me, explained what was happening as if…”
He broke off. Control was watching him closely, waiting for him to put the pieces together. Charlie began to nod his head as the picture emerged.
“When I was in the cage, she was part of the VR process….”
Control smiled his approval as Charlie reached the right conclusion. “Authenticity, Charlie. Her image was the link between your two worlds. She was the same in both—except that in one she was real, in the other virtual.”
Charlie sat down on the edge of his bunk again and leaned forward with his head in his hands. “I think I’m going crazy.”
“You’re not crazy, Charlie. You’re just learning how the world works. What can be done will be done. People argue over should and shouldn’t, but it makes no difference. If it can be done, it will.”
Charlie was silent for a moment, then said, “Tell me—those women who were always around? Did you arrange all that, too?”
Control gave a lapidary nod of his head. “Most of them were on the payroll. They didn’t know anything about you—you were just another client.”
“Most of them?”
A faint smile crossed Control’s face again. “To your credit, quite a few were volunteers you picked up for yourself. You’re a good-looking fellow, Charlie—take a look in the mirror. A lot of men would like to look like you.”
There was a small mirror, unbreakable, set into the wall above the washbasin, but Charlie didn’t even glance at it. Vanity on that level was something that had passed him by. Instead, he remained focused on Control, struggling to assemble the fragments of his broken universe into some kind of order.
“So why do I get the feeling, despite everything you’ve said, that Dr. Flemyng isn’t really part of all this?”
Control looked back at him, his face lighting up with the kind of interest that Charlie had noticed from time to time whenever he said so
mething that the other man hadn’t anticipated.
“Is that the impression you get?” Control asked.
“The impression that she’s doing this reluctantly? Yes, absolutely.”
“That’s very sharp of you, Charlie. You read body language better than almost any human being I know. That’s one of the things we’ve discovered about chimpanzees—this right-brain intuitiveness.”
“So I’m right?”
Control sighed and got to his feet. Charlie watched as he walked over to the door and knocked for it to be opened. Obviously the interview was at an end.
“Dr. Flemyng is a very brilliant and dedicated woman,” Control said, turning back to look at Charlie again. “She has her reasons for doing what she’s doing.”
With that, he stepped into the corridor, and the door banged shut behind him.
Chapter 44
OUTSIDE CHARLIE’S CELL was a holding area, and beyond that another gate operated by a guard on the far side. Control stepped through and into an area where three more guards lounged on comfortable chairs, played cards, drank coffee, and watched television. On a separate screen was an image of Charlie’s cell, viewed from a camera in the ceiling. Control paused to look, and saw Charlie standing perfectly still, apparently staring into space.
Latimer West stood in a doorway on the far side of the room. He waited for Control to acknowledge him with a patient deference that left no doubt who was the senior of the two men. When Control finally turned away from the monitor with its image of Charlie, West moved aside to let him pass through the door, then fell in step alongside him.
“Well, sir,” he said after they’d walked a little way, “what do you think?”
“He’s suffering, Latimer. More than I’d ever thought he could. The trouble is, he’s too damned intelligent.”
“I agree. It’s a matter of fine-tuning. It’s hard getting it exactly right, though when we do we’ll be able to reproduce the process indefinitely.”
They walked on a little farther.
“He’s no use operationally in this state of mind,” Control said, a note of impatience creeping into his voice. “I couldn’t trust either his concentration or his obedience to orders. What’s more, he knows too much now.”
Control let the last sentence hang in the air, its resonance undefined but fully understood.
They reached a single set of elevator doors. West touched a button and they opened at once. The interior was plain gray with no mirrors or decoration of any kind. West touched another button and they began to glide soundlessly and smoothly upward.
“So the question is,” Control went on, “what do we do with him now?”
West gave a noncommittal shrug. “As you say, he’s no longer of operational value. Scientifically, however, there’s still a good deal to be learned from him.”
Control looked sideways at the shorter man. “You mean you want to experiment on him?”
“I have a few things in mind I’d like to try. After all,” he added, seeing Control’s uncertain expression, “our options are limited. We can’t turn him loose, so we have to keep him caged, or put him down. Either that or use him in the lab. Strictly speaking, he’s still a lab animal.”
Control took a deep breath, then exhaled it in a long sigh. “I suppose you’re right. If there’s something left to learn, we have an obligation to learn it.”
West paused a moment before saying any more. He was gauging how frankly he could express the thought that was uppermost in his mind. He broached it cautiously. “Dr. Flemyng’s cooperation would be of the greatest value, if it could be arranged. I fear, however, I have very little chance myself of persuading her to work with us any further than she has already.”
Control cleared his throat, tacitly acknowledging that the problem of Dr. Flemyng was a thorny one. “It’s still my greatest regret,” he said, “that we had to involve her directly in this at all.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” West said quickly. “However, as you admitted yourself, we had little choice given the circumstances confronting us, and bearing in mind what she was proposing to do.”
Control made no reply, just stood waiting for the doors to open as the elevator slowed to a stop. The two men stepped out into a bright corridor running the whole length of a slightly curved building. The outer wall was made entirely of tinted glass, yielding an impressive view over the Irvine Spectrum. The sun was low in the east; it was early morning.
They stopped at one of several doors after walking about thirty yards. West turned to his superior. “Will you talk to Dr. Flemyng now, sir? As we discussed?”
Control nodded gravely. This was not a task he relished.
West opened the door, but did not go through it. Instead he pointed out the way that Control should go. “Down there as far as you can, left, then you’ll see a blue door. I’ll be in my office if you need me. Good luck, sir.”
Control gave a taciturn nod and started walking. A few moments later he stood outside the blue door, hesitating before opening it. He finally turned the handle and stepped into a conference room. There was a long table in the center, chairs all around, modern art on the walls. The entire far wall was, like the corridor he’d just left, of tinted glass. The room was empty, except for Susan, standing with her back to him, looking out at the view. When she heard the door, she turned.
Her eyes widened in astonishment, and she gave a gasp of surprise and happiness. She ran to him and threw her arms around him, laughing and crying with relief.
“Daddy! Oh, thank God, you’re alive! I thought you were… I thought they’d…”
Amery Hyde held her tight and stroked her hair.
“It’s all right, my darling. It’s all right. Everything’s going to be fine.”
PART FOUR
Chapter 45
THEY SAT AT a corner of the long table, holding hands.
“I don’t think they ever intended killing me,” Amery Hyde was saying. “Or Christopher. They just had to find some way of keeping you quiet, and threatening the two of us was the only way of doing it.”
“But they would have killed you if they’d had to. These people wouldn’t stop at anything.”
“Maybe. All I know is they haven’t killed any of us yet, and they don’t seem to want to if they can possibly avoid it.”
She looked at him in an oddly inquiring way. “Is that really the impression you get?”
Amery realized he had to be careful, but then carefulness to him was the habit of a lifetime. He liked to think of it as respect for the feelings and sensibilities of others. Not everyone, his daughter included, was ready to face up to the harsh realities of life. West had accused her, he knew, of living in an ivory tower, and in Amery’s opinion there was some truth in the charge. Yet he would do everything in his power, as he was doing now, to protect her from being forced out of her protected and unreal world before she was ready. Some people, he knew, would never and could never be ready for that level of encounter with reality. It was possible, he had long since acknowledged to himself, that his daughter, despite all her brilliance, was one of them.
But then he started to realize something else as he listened to her speaking. He began to see that some kind of change was coming over her, some shifting of perspective; and for the first time in many weeks he allowed himself to hope that everything he had fought so hard for—and sometimes, he had feared, hopelessly—was now within his grasp.
Susan spoke quietly but with an urgency that seemed to come from long and deep reflection. The decision she had reached was simply stated; more important, she was anxious that her father should understand the process that had brought her to it.
Amery listened gravely, taking his eyes from hers only to nod from time to time in solemn agreement.
“I haven’t changed my mind about Latimer West,” she told him, “and I don’t take back anything I’ve said about him or the foundation. And yet, now that I’ve had time to think about it, I have to admit there’s
some truth in some of the things he said, and some justification for what they’ve done. It’s true that what can be done will be done. It’s inevitable, a law of nature, and neither right nor wrong has much to do with it. The moral argument in the end is just a commentary. It doesn’t control the process, or even influence it much. I can see now that this whole program would have gone ahead with or without me. It’s just that I was the one who happened to be there, whose work came along at the right time. Otherwise there would have been somebody else.”
She paused, lifting her eyes to meet her father’s gaze, faltering slightly before saying what she had to say next. Amery knew how much she cared about what he thought. This was the kind of moment in which he wondered at his ability to play the game he had been playing all his adult life, a life spent in the most secret service of his country at the highest levels. He had done many things that had troubled him, not least the fact that he had never been able to be entirely open either with his wife before her death or with his daughter now. He had loved them both as much as any man had loved his family: That was his profound conviction. He had never allowed the secrecy his work imposed on him to drive a wedge between them, to compromise in any way the natural intimacy of man and wife or father and daughter. Yet he had never been sure how his wife would have reacted had she known the truth; and he had always known with certainty that Susan would not have understood. He didn’t know why, but she’d had an instinctive distrust of authority all her life. It wasn’t that she was any kind of anarchist or natural rebel, just that she had always accepted as a natural truth the dictum that power corrupts, and must therefore be distrusted and checked at every opportunity. Amery had always respected her views and rarely argued with her. In fact, his own attitudes were generally liberal, but he was also a realist who knew that freedom had to be protected, and sometimes difficult and even ugly things had to be done in the course of maintaining that protection. On the whole, however, he felt that his deception of his daughter—not so much outright lies as truths left untold—was justified. His duty as a father was to play the role she needed him to play; and that he did with all his heart.
The Discrete Charm of Charlie Monk Page 20
