"So you take nunnitude seriously."
Sister Carlotta sighed. "You think I came here because I know something about you and you don't want me to find out more. But I came here because of what I can't find out about you."
"Which is?"
"Anything. Because I was researching a particular matter for the I.F., they gave me a summary of articles on the topic of research into altering the human genome."
"And my name came up?"
"On the contrary, your name was never mentioned."
"How quickly they forget."
"But when I read the few papers available from the people they did mention – always early work, before the I.F. security machine clamped down on them – I noticed a trend. Your name was always cited in their footnotes. Cited constantly. And yet not a word of yours could be found. Not even abstracts of papers. Apparently you have never published."
"And yet they quote me. Almost miraculous, isn't it? You people do collect miracles, don't you? To make saints?"
"No beatification until after you're dead, sorry."
"I have only one lung left as it is," said Anton. "So I don't have that long to wait, as long as I keep smoking."
"You could stop."
"With only one lung, it takes twice as many cigarettes to get the same nicotine. Therefore I have had to increase my smoking, not cut down. This should be obvious, but then, you do not think like a scientist, you think like a woman of faith. You think like an obedient person. When you find out something is bad, you don't do it."
"Your research was into genetic limitations on human intelligence."
"Was it?"
"Because it's in that area that you are always cited. Of course, these papers were never about that exact subject, or they too would have been classified. But the titles of the articles mentioned in the footnotes – the ones you never wrote, since you never published anything – are all tied to that area."
"It is so easy in a career to find oneself in a rut."
"So I want to ask you a hypothetical question."
"My favorite kind. Next to rhetorical ones. I can nap equally well through either kind."
"Suppose someone were to break the law and attempt to alter the human genome, specifically to enhance intelligence."
"Then someone would be in serious danger of being caught and punished."
"Suppose that, using the best available research, he found certain genes that he could alter in an embryo that would enhance the intelligence of the person when he was born."
"Embryo! Are you testing me? Such changes can only happen in the egg. A single cell."
"And suppose a child was born with these alterations in place. The child was born and he grew up enough for his great intelligence to be noticed."
"I assume you are not speaking of your own child."
"I'm speaking of no child at all. A hypothetical child. How would someone recognize that this child had been genetically altered? Without actually examining the genes."
Anton shrugged. "What does it matter if you examine the genes? They will be normal."
"Even though you altered them?"
"It is such a little change. Hypothetically speaking."
"Within the normal range of variation?"
"It is two switches, one that you turn on, one that you turn off. The gene is already there, you see."
"What gene?"
"Savants were the key, for me. Autistic, usually. Dysfunctional. They have extraordinary mental powers. Lightning-fast calculations. Phenomenal memories. But they are inept, even retarded in other areas. Square roots of twelve-digit numbers in seconds, but incapable of conducting a simple purchase in a store. How can they be so brilliant, and so stupid?"
"That gene?"
"No, it was another, but it showed me what was possible. The human brain could be far smarter than it is. But is there a, how you say, bargain?"
"Trade-off."
"A terrible bargain. To have this great intellect, you have to give up everything else. That's how the brains of autistic savants accomplish such feats. They do one thing, and the rest is a distraction, an annoyance, beyond the reach of any conceivable interest. Their attention truly is undivided."
"So all hyperintelligent people would be retarded in some other way."
"That is what we all assumed, because that is what we saw. The exceptions seemed to be only mild savants, who were thus able to spare some concentration on ordinary life. Then I thought ... but I can't tell you what I thought, because I have been served with an order of inhibition."
He smiled helplessly. Sister Carlotta's heart fell. When someone was a proven security risk, they implanted in his brain a device that caused any kind of anxiety to launch a feedback loop, leading to a panic attack. Such people were then given periodic sensitization to make sure that they felt a great deal of anxiety when they contemplated talking about the forbidden subject. Viewed one way, it was a monstrous intrusion on a person's life; but if it was compared to the common practice of imprisoning or killing people who could not be trusted with a vital secret, an order of intervention could look downright humane.
That explained, of course, why Anton was amused by everything. He had to be. If he allowed himself to become agitated or angry – any strong negative emotion, really – then he would have a panic attack even without talking about forbidden subjects. Sister Carlotta had read an article once in which the wife of a man equipped with such a device said that their life together had never been happier, because now he took everything so calmly, with good humor. "The children love him now, instead of dreading his time at home." She said that, according to the article, only hours before he threw himself from a cliff. Life was better, apparently, for everyone but him.
And now she had met a man whose very memories had been rendered inaccessible.
"What a shame," said Sister Carlotta.
"But stay. My life here is a lonely one. You're a sister of mercy, aren't you? Have mercy on a lonely old man, and walk with me."
She wanted to say no, to leave at once. At that moment, however, he leaned back in his chair and began to breathe deeply, regularly, with his eyes closed, as he hummed a little tune to himself.
A ritual of calming. So ... at the very moment of inviting her to walk with him, he had felt some kind of anxiety that triggered the device. That meant there was something important about his invitation.
"Of course I'll walk with you," she said. "Though technically my order is relatively unconcerned with mercy to individuals. We are far more pretentious than that. Our business is trying to save the world."
He chuckled. "One person at a time would be too slow, is that it?"
"We make our lives of service to the larger causes of humanity. The Savior already died for sin. We work on trying to clean up the consequences of sin on other people."
"An interesting religious quest," said Anton. "I wonder whether my old line of research would have been considered a service to humanity, or just another mess that someone like you would have to clean up."
"I wonder that myself," said Sister Carlotta.
"We will never know." They strolled out of the garden into the alley behind the house, and then to a street, and across it, and onto a path that led through an untended park.
"The trees here are very old," Sister Carlotta observed.
"How old are you, Carlotta?"
"Objectively or subjectively?"
"Stick to the Gregorian calendar, please, as most recently revised."
"That switch away from the Julian system still sticks in the Russian craw, does it?"
"It forced us for more than seven decades to commemorate an October Revolution that actually occurred in November."
"You are much too young to remember when there were Communists in Russia."
"On the contrary, I am old enough now to have all the memories of my people locked within my head. I remember things that happened long before I was born. I remember things that never happened at all. I live in me
mory."
"Is that a pleasant place to dwell?"
"Pleasant?" He shrugged. "I laugh at all of it because I must. Because it is so sweetly sad – all the tragedies, and yet nothing is learned."
"Because human nature never changes," she said.
"I have imagined," he said, "how God might have done better, when he made man – in his own image, I believe."
"Male and female created he them. Making his image anatomically vague, one must suppose."
He laughed and clapped her rather too forcefully on the back. "I didn't know you could laugh about such things! I am pleasantly surprised!"
"I'm glad I could bring cheer into your bleak existence."
"And then you sink the barb into the flesh." They reached an overlook that had rather less of a view of the sea than Anton's own terrace. "It is not a bleak existence, Carlotta. For I can celebrate God's great compromise in making human beings as we are."
"Compromise?"
"Our bodies could live forever, you know. We don't have to wear out. Our cells are all alive; they can maintain and repair themselves, or be replaced by fresh ones. There are even mechanisms to keep replenishing our bones. Menopause need not stop a woman from bearing children. Our brains need not decay, shedding memories or failing to absorb new ones. But God made us with death inside."
"You are beginning to sound serious about God."
"God made us with death inside, and also with intelligence. We have our seventy years or so – perhaps ninety, with care – in the mountains of Georgia, a hundred and thirty is not unheard of, though I personally believe they are all liars. They would claim to be immortal if they thought they could get away with it. We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time."
"Surely you're not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings!"
"It's there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees – knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying."
"You speak in theological terms, and yet I thought you were an unbeliever."
"Theology is a joke to me. Amusing! I laugh at it. I can tell amusing stories about theology, to jest with believers. You see? It pleases me and keeps me calm."
At last she understood. How clearly did he have to spell it out? He was telling her the information she asked about, but doing it in code, in a way that fooled not only any eavesdroppers – and there might well be listeners to every word they said – but even his own mind. It was all a jest; therefore he could tell her the truth, as long as he did it in this form.
"Then I don't mind hearing your wild humorous forays into theology."
"Genesis tells of men who lived to be more than nine hundred years old. What it does not tell you is how very stupid these men all were."
Sister Carlotta laughed aloud.
"That's why God had to destroy humanity with his little flood," Anton went on. "Get rid of those stupid people and replace them with quicker ones. Quick quick quick, their minds moved, their metabolism. Rushing onward into the grave."
"From Methuselah at nearly a millennium of life to Moses with his hundred and twenty years, and now to us. But our lives are getting longer."
"I rest my case."
"Are we stupider now?"
"So stupid that we would rather have long life for our children than see them become too much like God, knowing ... good and evil ... knowing ... everything." He clutched at his chest, gasping. "Ah, God! God in heaven!" He sank to his knees, His breath was shallow and rapid now. His eyes rolled back in his head. He fell over.
Apparently he hadn't been able to maintain his self-deception. His body finally caught on to how he had managed to tell his secret to this woman by speaking it in the language of religion.
She rolled him onto his back. Now that he had fainted, his panic attack was subsiding. Not that fainting was trivial in a man of Anton's age. But he would not need any heroism to bring him back, not this time. He would wake up calm.
Where were the people who were supposed to be monitoring him? Where were the spies who were listening in to their conversation?
Pounding feet on the grass, on the leaves.
"A bit slow, weren't you?" she said without looking up.
"Sorry, we didn't expect anything." The man was youngish, but not terribly bright-looking. The implant was supposed to keep him from spilling his tale; it was not necessary for his guards to be clever.
"I think he'll be all right."
"What were you talking about?"
"Religion," she said, knowing that her account would probably be checked against a recording. "He was criticizing God for mis-making human beings. He claimed to be joking, but I think that a man of his age is never really joking when he talks about God, do you?"
"Fear of death gets in them," said the young man sagely – or at least as sagely as he could manage.
"Do you think he accidentally triggered this panic attack by agitating his own anxiety about death?" If she asked it as a question, it wasn't actually a lie, was it?
"I don't know. He's coming around."
"Well, I certainly don't want to cause him any more anxiety about religious matters. When he wakes up, tell him how grateful I am for our conversation. Assure him that he has clarified for me one of the great questions about God's purpose."
"Yes, I'll tell him," said the young man earnestly.
Of course he would garble the message hopelessly.
Sister Carlotta bent over and kissed Anton's cold, sweaty forehead. Then she rose to her feet and walked away.
So that was the secret. The genome that allowed a human being to have extraordinary intelligence acted by speeding up many bodily processes. The mind worked faster. The child developed faster. Bean was indeed the product of an experiment in unlocking the savant gene. He had been given the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But there was a price. He would not be able to taste of the tree of life. Whatever he did with his life, he would have to do it young, because he would not live to be old.
Anton had not done the experiment. He had not played God, bringing forth human beings who would live in an explosion of intelligence, sudden fireworks instead of single, long-burning candles. But he had found a key God had hidden in the human genome. Someone else, some follower, some insatiably curious soul, some would-be visionary longing to take human beings to the next stage of evolution or some other such mad, arrogant cause – this someone had taken the bold step of turning that key, opening that door, putting the killing, brilliant fruit into the hand of Eve. And because of that act – that serpentine, slithering crime – it was Bean who had been expelled from the garden. Bean who would now, surely, die – but die like a god, knowing good and evil.
CHAPTER 10 – SNEAKY
"I can't help you. You didn't give me the information I asked for."
"We gave you the damned summaries."
"You gave me nothing and you know it. And now you come to me asking me to evaluate Bean for you – but you do not tell me why, you give me no context. You expect an answer but you deprive me of the means of providing it."
"Frustrating, isn't it?"
"Not for me. I simply won't give you any answer."
"Then Bean is out of the program."
"If your mind is made up, no answer of mine will change you, especially because you have made certain my answer will be unreliable."
"You know more than you've told me, and I must have it."
"How marvelous. You have achieved perfect empathy with me, for that is the exact statement I have repeatedly made to you."
"An eye for an eye? How Christian of you."
"Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians."
"Perhaps you haven't heard, but there's a war on."
"Again, I could have said the same thing to you. There's a war on, yet you fence me around with foolish secrecy. Since there is no evidence of t
he Formic enemy spying on us, this secrecy is not about the war. It's about the Triumvirate maintaining their power over humanity. And I am not remotely interested in that."
"You're wrong. That information is secret in order to prevent some terrible experiments from being performed."
"Only a fool closes the door when the wolf is already inside the barn."
"Do you have proof that Bean is the result of a genetic experiment?"
"How can I prove it, when you have cut me off from all evidence? Besides, what matters is not whether he has altered genes, but what those genetic changes, if he has them, might lead him to do. Your tests were all designed to allow you to predict the behavior of normal human beings. They may not apply to Bean."
"If he's that unpredictable, then we can't rely on him. He's out."
"What if he's the only one who can win the war? Do you drop him from the program then?"
***
Bean didn't want to have much food in his body, not tonight, so he gave away almost all his food and turned in a clean tray long before anyone else was done. Let the nutritionist be suspicious – he had to have time alone in the barracks.
The engineers had always located the intake at the top of the wall over the door into the corridor. Therefore the air must flow into the room from the opposite end, where the extra bunks were unoccupied. Since he had not been able to see a vent just glancing around that end of the room, it had to be located under one of the lower bunks. He couldn't search for it when others would see him, because no one could be allowed to know that he was interested in the vents. Now, alone, he dropped to the floor and in moments was jimmying at the vent cover. It came off readily. He tried putting it back on, listening carefully for the level of noise that operation caused. Too much. The vent screen would have to stay off. He laid it on the floor beside the opening, but out of the way so he wouldn't accidentally bump into it in the darkness. Then, to be sure, he took it completely out from under that bunk and slid it under the one directly across.
Done. He then resumed his normal activities.
Until night. Until the breathing of the others told him that most, if not all, were asleep.
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