The Gentle Seduction

by Marc Stiegler

  But now the cancer had invaded her spinal cord, slowly working its way to her brain. It was no longer the pain sensors in her body that screamed in dying agony, but rather the central nerves themselves. The pain killers could no longer kill the pain; dosages strong enough to kill the pain would kill her, too. Though perhaps that wasn't a bad idea.

  He talked to her. He told her about his summer job, and his preparations to start college in the fall. She listened, and moaned, and changed positions, and screamed. She screamed when she lay still, and she screamed when she moved, no matter where she moved, for the cancer followed her to each new position.

  Finally it was time to go. Max stood up uncertainly. "Ill be seeing ya, Mom." He started automatically to say "Keep smiling"—it was Max's way of saying farewell— but he choked it off.

  His mother smiled at him—it was a hideous caricature of a smile, for the lines of pain stamped her face with indelible creases—but it was her best effort nevertheless. "Keep smiling," she said.

  Max stood there in agony, seeing her pain. "You too," he blurted as he hurried out of the room.

  He never told anyone to keep smiling again.

  "Cancer is a hideous disease, more terrible than any other disease we have ever known." He looked down, then looked up again. His voice turned soft, and terrifying in its gentle pressure. "Have you ever seen a city die of radiation poisoning? It is not a pretty thing, to die slowly, painfully."

  Max felt flustered as he considered the number of times he had tried to make people see that these two, death by disease and death by radiation, were related. God, how he wished he were Jason! His voice rose involuntarily; he couldn't control it.

  "Can't you see what's wrong with saving millions of lives? Billions may die! Can't you see that we have too many people already trying to share this planet?"

  "Politicians!" Max exploded. "What disgusting kinds of creatures. You say this guy is a friend of yours?"

  "Come on." Tina tugged him down the sidewalk until they were by the gate of a low stone wall. Behind the wall elms drooped in the summer heat, though it was cooler now that the sun was sinking. "He's a neat person despite his occupation." Her eyes twinkled. "And he's sharp, too. I'll bet that before the evening's over, you'll have a different opinion."

  "About a politician? Not hardly."

  "You'll have a different opinion about something. I don't know what, but Jason always . . . People are always just a little bit different after talking to him."

  "No doubt he uses mind drugs."

  "What an excellent idea!" a voice from somewhere among the elms cried. "Mind drugs! Tell me, do you have any recommendations? I've always believed in softening people up first, particularly if they hate—" and now the voice changed to mimic Max's "—politicians."

  Max peered into the shadows, and saw nothing until somebody tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped around.

  "Hi. I'm Jason. Jay to my friends, except when they're angry at me." A small, pale man with dark eyes and black hair offered his hand.

  "I'm Max." They shook hands.

  "Hi, Jay." Tina hugged him, and Max felt a twinge of jealously. Not that he had any right to be jealous. Tina was Steve's girl; at least she had been when Steve left for the summer. Though now, Max wasn't so sure. Whom did she love: Steve? Or Max? Max was uncomfortable with the question; he knew he wanted her himself, desperately; but Steve had met her first. In Max's code of ethics, she belonged to Steve.

  Tina had him by the arm again. "Come on, dopey. Didn't you hear what he said?"

  Max blinked.

  "If we don't get inside soon, the bugs will climb out of the trees and eat us alive." She pulled him along.

  They sat down at the kitchen table: a long, beautifully carved table steeped in the smells of food and the echoes of loud laughter and deep discussions. It was a place of home.

  Max sat at the corner, with Jason at the head of the table next to him, leaning forward, his dark eyes alive with energy, somehow not conflicting with his soft smile. "So you don't like politicians."

  "Well," Max suppressed a blush, then decided he might as well be honest, "not really. Not at all."

  "Why?" His tone was sharp, though friendly.

  Max shrugged. "Look at all the stupid things they do." He sat forward himself. "Like wars, and arms races, and burglary—"

  "Burglary?"

  "Yeah, stealing money from one person to give it to another—usually to give it to another bureaucrat."

  "Like in the social safety net system."

  "Yeah."

  Jason nodded. "It's not an easy problem. Surely you can see that it's hard for a politician to fight Social Security—there are a lot of people who want it kept alive, no matter how much it costs, because it's benefitting them. And every year there are more people it benefits, and more voters who would hang anybody who tried to stop it."

  "And there's fewer people to pay for it." Max had been furious that summer when he got his first pay check, to find that almost half his pay had been taken out before he even got it. "Everybody knows it'll destroy us eventually. Even the politicians. And they know that the longer they wait the harder it'll be to stop. If they were any good, they'd risk their jobs now, before it's too late."

  Jason stroked his chin. "Ah. What you want isn't a politician. What you want is a statesman."

  Max stared at him blankly.

  "A politician is a man who can get voted into office. A statesman is somebody who, once into office, can make wise decisions. The two have very little in common."

  "Then which one are you?" Max smiled wickedly.

  Jason looked away from Max's face. "I'm not quite sure. Right now I'm running for the House. I suppose I'm a politician. " He looked back at Max, and his smile returned. "Of course, I plan to be a statesman once I get there."

  "Ha! Not a chance." Max loved to be cynical, particularly when he was justified.

  "That is unjustified cynicism," Jason countered, as if he were a mind reader. "Being expedient from time to time doesn't prove you're completely immoral all the time. Haven't you ever done something you knew was stupid, just to please your advisor, in effect buying his vote?"

  "Well . . ." Dammit! Of course he had. But—

  "Besides, there have been some who became statesmen, you know—or do you think Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln were men without principles, the way you seem to think all politicans are?" He raised an eyebrow. "Actually, there's no way you can tell whether I can do it until I've actually been tested. Or don't you believe in the experimental method?"

  Max almost choked. "Of course I believe in it."

  "Then how can you make such silly claims?" Jason's smile broadened. "Better yet, what are you doing that is so much more meaningful and worthwhile than what I'm doing?" His eyes picked up the laughter in his smile. "I hear you're supposed to be protecting the human race while it's growing up."

  Max ran his hands down the arms of the chair. "Oh, not quite." His voice turned a bit smug. "I am working on saving millions of lives, which is almost as good. We might even achieve immortality."

  "Oh, really? Are you sure that saving lives and making them immortal is the right thing to do for humanity right now?"

  Max stared blankly at Jason yet again. "What do you mean?"

  Jason seemed surprised by Max's incomprehension. "Isn't it obvious? There are eight billion people crowded together here already. You're talking about increasing the number of people, increasing the burden on the planet's resources, reducing the amount of resources per person." He slapped his hand palm up on the table. "Man, some of the people you'll be saving are going to burn gasoline that you could have burned, put smog in the air you'll have to breathe, and increase the price of the food you buy. For some people, it'll make the difference between buying enough, and not enough."

  "Wait a minute."

  "In fact, the group you'll have the most impact on is the older, more disease-prone part of the population— the ones using the safety net—the one
s you were just moaning about. What'll it do to your taxes if they keep on living?" Jason shrugged his shoulders. "Course, you'll be rich and famous, after inventing the cure. It won't be a problem for you—you'll be a member of the rich, protected class. It'll just be a problem for people like me, who're trying to stop the problem."

  Max found his jaw hanging open; slowly he closed it.

  There was a science magazine lying to one side; Jason stretched for it, couldn't reach it. "Tina, could you get that for me?"

  Tina retrieved the magazine for him.

  "Thank you, my dear," Jason said. Again Max felt groundless jealousy.

  Jason flicked rapidly through the pages. "What about the new cancers they just isolated—or rather, the ones they just recognized as being different?"

  "Well be able to cure those, too, I'm pretty sure." Max was still dizzy from the rate at which the topic changed.

  Jason stopped on a page. "There it is. 'Though they have the same symptoms as the usual cancers, like lung cancer and melanoma, these mutant II cancers have three distinctive features: they are much more prevalent in the post-industrial societies, even considering lifespan biases; they have a peculiar binodal distribution, striking primarily young adults ages eighteen to twenty-five, and people just past the midlife crisis, ages forty-five to fifty-five; and they have a 99.9% mortality rate, being virtually immune to traditional therapies." Jason looked up at Max. "This disease just might save the world."

  "What?" Max felt dizzy. Where'd this guy come from? Where was his mind going?

  "Don't you see? By wiping out people when they hit retirement age, we can reduce the strain on our society caused by retirement. Better yet, by killing off the ones just getting out of high school and college, when they're entering their best breeding years, we can reduce the overall population."

  "We don't have to reduce the population. The population is going down anyway."

  Jason waved the objection away breezily. "Just a temporary fad, with this new-woman identity. In five years the population will start zooming up again. I just hope it doesn't grow so fast that it makes up for all the slow-growth years instantly."

  "You can't be serious."

  "Sure I can. Don't you see the danger? As the population grows, so does the probability that someone will pull the trigger on a nuclear holocaust. To go around curing all the diseases—to say nothing of passing out immortality like candy—would be crazy. It's a simple case of suicide."

  "You're not serious." Max just couldn't believe him.

  Jason leaned forward, looking Max steadily in the eye, still smiling. "Am I? Does it make a difference whether I'm serious or not?"

  Did it make a difference? If his arguments were correct, shouldn't Max take them seriously, regardless of whether Jason took them seriously?

  Tina pressed his hand. "I told you Jason would change your opinions,"

  Jason looked over at her. "And you, Tina, what have you been doing lately that you shouldn't have?"

  The three of them argued long into the night, about many things. Somehow, Jason seemed invincible. Max had never seen anything like it; Max or Tina would box him into a corner with his newest, crazy opinion. But then he'd rush them with a flurry of new ideas, new points of view, and suddenly they were the ones caught in a corner.

  Max still didn't know whether to take him seriously or not. But he started reading the papers, looking for proofs and justifications for his conviction that saving lives was still an honorable enterprise.

  Unfortunately, hideously, he found that Jason had been wrong: it wouldn't take five years for the trend of falling population to reverse itself. By the end of the summer, the census takers were giving the sociologists shocking information that destroyed all the pet theories.

  The population was rising again. The only things growing as fast as the population were poverty and mutant II cancers.

  "And we Americans 'share,' " he lingered over the euphemism with careful but heavy sarcasm, "more of this planet than most other people put together—a single American consumes as many resources as hundreds of people in Norafrica.

  "And everyone in the world knows it! How many more cities like San Diego must we lose? How many more notable Americans must be stalked by terrorists before we see the connection?"

  "My God. Have you told Tina yet?" Max sat motionless in the chair."

  "No, Mr. President."

  Max squirmed; he wasn't used to the title, though he had borne it for a year now.

  "We left it for you to tell her."

  "Of course." Max turned in his chair, then looked back at the Secret Service agent. "I would like to speak to the wives of the four men who died, Bill," he said to the Secret Service agent.

  "Very well, Mr. President." The Secret Service agent bowed and left.

  Max held his head in his hands and screamed softly. His son— their son—had been kidnapped in a bloody struggle. Why did people do these inhuman things?

  The story was already breaking in the newspapers; it was hard to stop a leak when half the people in Washington heard or saw the fighting. Max didn't want to tell Tina until he found out why it had happened.

  He didn't have to wait too long. Within the hour they received a package at the White House. And the package contained . . . He went to tell Tina.

  He held her and he told her; she was rigid as a statue. "It's a normal list of demands: two million dollars cash, the release of the five SALO prisoners we took in September, a planeful of guns and ammunition."

  "Can't we give it to them?" She pleaded, but she knew the answer.

  "If we do, they'll never let an American president alone again. Hideous as this is, it'll only get worse if we don't stop them now. You know that, don't you?"

  Tina sobbed; her whole body shook. "Do we know these are really the people who kidnapped him—the same ones who blew up San Diego?"

  Max's stomach rose in his throat. "Oh God. Yes, we know it's them, Tina." He couldn't open his mouth, much less talk, but he had to tell her. He had to tell her. "They included proof in the package. They . . . they sent back . . . Mike's right index finger."

  Her eyes bulged; she screamed; Max held her as tightly as he could.

  "I can't help him, Tina." He was crying. "But we'll kill them for it, if I have to do it myself. I'll resign when it's over, we'll get a house in the Rockies. I'm sorry."

  Max tried to keep his promise; he did keep the first part. He gave the terrorists their five comrades, and their money, and a planeful of ammunition, and the SALO terrorists took Mike on board and headed for Bolivia, and Max signed the strike orders that sent three Firechargers to intercept, and they obliterated the plane and burned the money and killed the five freed prisoners and the twelve terrorists.

  And killed Mike. At least, that was a possibility; no one knew for sure whether Mike was still alive by then.

  Max did not keep the second half of his promise. He did not resign. In fact, the incident gave him a power in international politics unmatched in modern times: only a madman would order his own son killed. Oddly enough, the world respected madmen.

  Max read the note Tina had left for the hundredth time.

  Dear Max,

  I know you believe you did the right thing. Perhaps I do too. I don't know. But . . . I just can't bear to live with the man who killed our son. I'm sorry. I love you.

  He couldn't blame her. He couldn't live with the man who had killed their son either, but he had less choice.

  Had he killed their son? Part of his psyche railed against the notion: it was the SALO terrorists who were responsible, dammit!

  What does it mean to be responsible for something? Max could remember Jay asking. Max remembered his conclusion on the matter after Jason had forced him to think deeply about it years ago. Responsibility is shared by all those who have the knowledge and the power to prevent an event, but who let it—or make it— happen anyway. The SALO terrorists were responsible, even more responsible than he was, because it would have been e
asier for them to make decisions that saved his son s life. But Max was responsible, too. He accepted it.

  He found he could not resign, to leave the world to forge its own solutions to its problems; he was responsible for that, too, now. He accepted it.

  "We, the people of America, are consuming this planet!" He was starting to shake; he slowly straightened his shoulders, as Jason had taught him. He stepped back to the lectern (he had stepped away toward the audience at some point in his speech) and was calm. "Each day there are incidents that could lead to the holocaust. Each month we escape Final Confrontation by even narrower margins."

  "Mr. President, they're heading for Vladivostok. We won't be able to reach them in time. They're only minutes from Russian waters, and it looks like half the Soviet Air Force is loitering around the area, just in case they need help."

  "Very well, General. Keep me posted. "

  Max leaned back in his chair and shuddered. It was just another ordinary crisis. Another ordinary chance for the world to end.

  He could order a GHOL strike now. The enemy commandoes would be dead, and the world would once again receive notice that murder of the innocent leads to murder of the murderers as well.

  But it would set a new and terrible precedent, the precedent Max had fought against setting since his first inauguration. He couldn't use the GHOL, the Ground- attack Heavy Orbital gamma ray Laser, to settle ordinary crises. Otherwise it would be used each time a crisis arose, each time with a little bit less circumspection, until . . .

  He knew what he had to do. His stomach flip-flopped as he thought about it, but he knew he had to do it.

  He turned to the hot line. He called Kiril Perstev.

  The premier appeared on the visiphone. "Good day, Mr. President," he said in perfect English. He smiled. "I presume you think you have a problem."

  Max's heart pounded in fear. Kiril was too good; he was the closest match to Jason he had ever met, fluent in many languages, with many points of view that he could shift into and out of with lightning speed. He was for Russia what Jason should have been for America.