For instance, because the beetle responsible for spreading Elms’ Disease had to be mutated in order to help save the spiders, the modified version took an interest in forests previously immune from attack. The Oak, Horsechestnut and — disastrously — the Palm, staunch protector of every oasis worth discussing, fell victim to the scourge. By the billion, palm trees ended up as splintered protrusions in the dust, totally incapable of preventing the erosion of fertile soil.
Thus, as the new gales swept those few that still remained, so the seeds were scattered where nothing could grow. Worse, trees like the Sycamore, whose perpetuation depended on the aerodynamic properties of their leaves, dried out and perished because the very genetic code which defined the shape of the leaf became garbled by gamma rays. The leaves, therefore, were like aeroplanes without wings, and lay uselessly on the barren runways where the soil had crusted hard from want. For the most part the Sycamore entirely disappeared; only in one small promontory of land did it survive in slightly modified form, because here the mountains absorbed the unnatural movement of high pressure air and protected the foothills.
This area comprised a section of what had once been known as Provence, in the South of France.
*
After the passage of some two hundred years, the redistribution of sea currents stove-in the frail division that had marked the frontier between Egypt and its neighbour — largely through the artificial incision once called the Suez Canal. Ocean water entered the Mediterranean like liquid hate; the livid water-wall cascaded through the Straits of Gibraltar and cut a hacksawed path to the opposing Gulf: Aquaba. Water levels experimented with their new freedoms and before long a tidal system ranged from Spain in the West to the Red Sea in the East, flooding the Nile Valley and, to the North, drowning forever the playground of Twentieth Century Man: the Riviera. Here, the tide limit in the South of France rose almost to Digne, sluicing along the valley beneath the Chateau of Carross, cutting a crevasse into a coned funnel; a fiord along which submerged debris was spewed by a wildly fomenting sea.
Amidst this flotsam was, by contrast, the slowly moving hulk of Kasiga. By this time she was clothed in a mesh of clinging sea-life; shells the size of massive boulders sucked themselves to the hull and lived there, vastly slowing down her progress so that, in the last hundred years, Kasiga was moving at less than twenty metres each hour. Sometimes an autumn tide would pile another buttress of water against the widening neck of the Straits of Gibraltar; and the energy resulting from each impact gave Kasiga further momentum. So she moved, unloved and unknown, as a fossil-octopus might move, governed by the laws of chance and conveyed falteringly, two steps forward, one step back, wherever she chanced to go.
Or so it seemed.
The Tidal Manager, Solar System Sector, knew by now that Kasiga’s progress was not as random as all that. His pocket calculator, quite a gimmicky thing powered by solar batteries, showed conclusively that the movements of this encrusted hulk were not purely chance; and when he had checked this against the latest tide tables issued from the Computer Centre in the basement of the Hilton he asked just what exactly was going on.
The Watch Superviser on Star 47 listened carefully and considered the variables. He was actually speaking from the Space Simulator Room — a vast, dome-roofed complex from which the movement of any star or planet could be projected around the dome according to the program selected. ‘Hang on,’ he said.
It was a small matter to punch up the required data.
Instantly a detailed trace of Earth-tides formed a sweeping array of curlicues that patterned the entire area in 3-D. By using the time-control selector the Watch Superviser — duty-god to all intents and purposes — could speed up or slow down the visible projection of water-masses on Earth. The program was written in such a way as to take into account the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon, as well as the more subtle Space Fields so essential to accurate celestial meteorology. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘In some way that thing just has to be guided.’
‘Any idea how?’
‘Not at the present time. We’ll look into it. Then come back to you.’
‘Roger and thanks.’
*
It is a calm, sweet-summer day. The surface of the Mediterranean, though encroaching tidally upon the valley, is flat and polished, like a lake. The old chateau, seeming only slightly more derelict than it had been in the Twentieth Century, towers above the tide. In the gully, birds fly silently. These are Atlantic Gulls. Larger than the common gull which is now extinct, they are immensely strong and capable of long range flight. Structurally they are like tankers, for on close examination it can be seen that they have humps — like camels, but streamlined. The humps contain tissue that can store a fluid derived from fresh water and food. So, were it not for their wings, they would appear squat.
It would be hard to imagine them without wings, for these are magnificent. As if nature has somehow copied Man’s less destructive brand of invention, they are clearly delta-shaped and the feathers are so geometrically integrated that both leading and trailing edges seem absolutely clean … pure aerofoils designed for high altitudes and impressive speeds. Evolution has, even in this short period, sorted out the basic requirements for covering the huge distances that separate sources of sustenance. To overcome the endurance problem set by headwinds, you must have plenty of speed to improve your side of the equation; yet to find jetstreams that will aid long-distance flight, you must have altitude, excellent climbing power, an efficient power-to-weight ratio, the necessary capacity for fuel. The Atlantic Gull has stolen from high radiation levels the ability to evolve very rapidly. After three hundred years it has become a formidable contender for any trophy.
Now, a few of them circle lazily over the bay as the uppermost structure of a submerged monster breaks surface. It looks like a green and brown whale of enormous proportions; for through the cool, clear water can be seen, shimmering, the bulbous outline of the rest of it. It is barely moving.
The weeds have slowed it to a velocity of less than a metre a minute. It seems motionless; except that in beaching itself it very gradually shows more of its slimy upper surfaces.
Kasiga has berthed herself in the ravine below Carross.
*
She is not a dead ship. She never was. Even at the time when Hawkridge and Slazenger were torpedoed from her bowels she was alive. She was a hoaxer, a Chinese puzzle afloat. And even if her manufacturers gave a moment’s clear thought to the true chances for her living passengers to survive, the victims were human camouflage, a mere excuse for the perverting of gigantic funds.
For those among the junior gods of the universe who are not all that familiar with the more startling peccadilloes of Homo Sapiens, it is worth pointing out that even senior gods remain baffled by the more explosive traits of this species. For even looking back objectively through the three intervening centuries it is still hard to understand the mind of the nuclear physicist. Perhaps, because it was science itself that split the atom, this innocently academic pursuit provided the incubator for split personality as well. For the innocence that prevailed in the Cavendish Laboratory abruptly lost its virginity over Hiroshima; and the pulverization of this planet owed itself as much to the human chain linking Cambridge with Japan as it did to the chain reaction that sparked it. And the chain did not stop there.
There had been people called ‘professors’, but even Webster’s Dictionary failed to define the essence of a professor’s mind. In a civilization wherein the Prize for Peace was named after the inventor of high-explosives, no dictionary could hope to grapple with the warped logic inherent in so many of its more significant words.
Such a breed of men could not but bring catastrophe on themselves but they were not equipped to keep this catastrophe private. While uttering sombre warnings to the rest of humanity about the appalling consequences to humanity of all they devised, they went on devising it with a zealous dedication seldom reflected in any other field. They
made peace with themselves and war with the world. Thus they were capable of any deceit as long as it was labelled with an innocuous-sounding mnemonic … P.E.A.C.E. would do excellently for such a disguise. Spelt out, it really read ‘Plutonium Electronically Activated for Catastrophic Extinction’. It was a great success.
A group of such men of science as these approached, in their day, the more senile among high government officials and issued glum warnings. They were in a strong position to do so. The momentum for such warnings originated in the laboratories they so gleefully supervised between doomtide gatherings.
During these gatherings they proposed the building of Kasiga — a rich man’s Noah’s Ark.
At first their reception was cool, mostly because the venture was costly. But after a few more years of meddling with megadeath they began to make headway; until an organization called NATO, faced with its equally ferocious counterpart in the USSR, came to the curious conclusion that part of the expenditure reserved for the Defence budget should go toward an urgent exodus from the predictable outcome of their diligence. In devising ‘Defence’ weapons they made a hasty departure obligatory.
Since the design for the resulting lifeboat was vested in experts who were even enabled to keep secrets from each other over the details of the same ship — because its method of construction was modular — it wasn’t hard for scientists and their technological flunkies to come up with a vessel that was so elegantly two-faced that even its Commander didn’t know how many decks there were. Like Hawkridge in his final search for the fruits of survival, the Commander — who died much earlier from something that must have amounted to terminal confusion — had been wont to stride along the deepest accessible deck, during his tours of inspection, thinking, no doubt, that all that lay below his feet were the pressure-tanks without which a submarine cannot be defined as such.
The detailed, illuminated blueprints in the huge control centre near the bridge of the ship obediently flashed many a light to disclose the state of the watertight compartments the Commander actually knew about. What these picturesque displays omitted were interesting details relating to the ship’s sub-structure.
To all intents and purposes, Kasiga had a false bottom.
*
While beached motionless for some twenty years, not so very far from the former site of Nice Airport, Kasiga appeared to be as dead as any other corpse. Although automatic loudspeaker announcements continued to address her desolate, fungus-infested torso, no sign of life — animate or synthesized — prowled her corroded decks. All that Hawkridge had once known of her had decayed. It would have seemed to him impossible that mechanically-produced voices could still be reverberating so chillingly throughout her decks.
Possibly, Hawkridge had heard of a ‘startime clock’ — the rather grandiose nickname for the Caesium Clock … originally designed for Greenwich Observatory in the 1960s. A modified version of this expensive piece of equipment was just one small part of the total content of Deck ZD-One.
But then, Hawkridge knew nothing of the existence of this sealed part of the ship. He knew nothing of the technology that made it possible for so huge a section of a vessel to be kept corrosion-free for a period of over three hundred years. He knew nothing of the elaborate ingenuity that went into absorbing condensation, maintaining perfect air, perpetuating the process of each successive fuel-cell triggering off the next, just before the dying fuel-cell ceased to function. Hawkridge knew nothing of the layers of protective coating that rendered Deck ZD-One an hygienic, sterilized monument to Man. He didn’t know; and nor did anyone else — by then.
Ironically, the one professor who thought he might get aboard in time — and thereby change all that Kasiga meant in terms of the far-distant future — had been beheaded by the blades of a helicopter caught in a gust. Minutes before he was due to fly to the classified location where Kasiga lay, submerged and waiting, the man with the can-opener died with his secret.
So, since Hawkridge didn’t know of the existence of Deck ZD-One, he could hardly be expected to have known its purpose. Had he done so, he himself might have been puzzled. For Hawkridge’s view of learned professors was a perceptive one. He knew of their ambivalence, the sting in the tail of super-knowledge that smouldered like a time-fuse in back of creative discovery. He must surely have been enlightened on that point once he and Slazenger sluiced themselves out of Kasiga. Did he have an inkling of what lay so deep below? Is that why he made that last desperate search for supplies? Could it be that Hawkridge sensed that the split-personality of Kasiga’s architects had been expressed in two entirely separate ideals? — the destructive element dedicated to the futile preservation of a few human lives for a hopelessly short time; the creative one channelled into an unknown area of inspired activity? … And was he, in his death-throes, searching for proof?
He certainly suspected something. Was it that?
It can’t be known.
And yet, deep in the sump of the submarine and hermetically sealed from those decks which Hawkridge knew so well, was the hidden arena called Deck ZD-One.
And here there existed not the numbed, cadaverous atmosphere of a luxurious catafalque, but a strangely tranquil sanctuary which would have posed to Hawkridge the greatest enigma of all.
*
Deck ZD-One is silent but not eerie; deserted but not dead. The peace that seems to prevail within it has nothing to do with the eternity of a shrine.
Something is trying to happen; and Time is holding its breath. Only the caesium clock, its green display glowing so dimly — barely reflected by the glossy tungsten-steel nearby — suggests that the flow of time is even feasible.
This startime clock indicates, with an accuracy correct to the nanosecond, the year, the date, the time. It must be so because it is driven by the natural decay-rate of Matter itself. Caesium is changing into other substances and the speed with which it does this cannot be altered, any more than the Universe of which it is a part can be deflected from the course of its prescribed lifetime as decreed by the total energy with which it began. Here is ‘Time’ as we understand it.
The startime clock completes the count-down:
A.D. 2293 FEB 2 2359 59
One second later the display changes:
A.D. 2293 FEB 3 0000 00
Right the other end of Deck ZD-One, a single green light glows faintly in the darkness.
The light is inset on the control console of a conventional computer; an ordinary hunk of hardware originating in the Twentieth Century, whose technology congealed in one transcontinental nuclear flash.
So the computer is a stupid thing; a dumb, bolted-together contraption which will simply do what it’s told, in obedience to the programs and software locked within it.
Now, upon the zero-impulse from the clock, it begins.
Minus Twelve
The Senior Interrogod said, ‘Stop the videotape there.’
The engineer complied and faded up the houselights of the small projection room. On intercom to the auditorium he said, ‘In any case, sir, we’re getting leakback. Somebody way back in the Twentieth Century knows what we’re doing. Probably calls it clairvoyance or ESP — something of that sort.’
The Interrogod said to a colleague, ‘Ironically the leakback will only reach them a fraction of a second before their holocaust.’
‘But they’ll know?’
‘They’ll know. Too late. They’ll know what we know — that everything blew … But it will come to them when they’ve virtually blown it.’ — in Space the future tense is retroactive.
‘We can’t use Red Shift?’
‘Not in this case. You know as well as I do we can’t stop what happened. No way.’ He called up to the engineer, ‘Ignore the leakback and run the tapes you have on Dollenburg.’
‘From which point?’
‘The sequence with his wife. You know the one?’
‘Sure.’
‘Then go straight to his critics … the Washington sequence. You have
it up there? VT/047 if I recall it right.’
‘I have it and it’ll be ready laced-up on the other machine, sir. Just give me a cue and I’ll run it.’
‘That’s fine but hold it for a couple of minutes.’ The Interrogod turned to the Deputy-Administrator, Milky Way. About Dollenburg’s home life: How much is known?’
The Deputy Administrator replied expressionlessly, ‘In the words of our own Commander-in-Chief Trans-Spacial Command, his wife was a stunner.’
‘Yes, well I know all about the C-in-C’s appreciation of things temporal — not to say things carnal. Who was she?’ The Interrogod couldn’t suppress a hint of a grin. ‘No … Tell you what: Get the C-in-C on the intercom. Let’s have the description in his own godlike words …’ He snapped down a switch.
The instrument squawked back, ‘C-in-C here.’
‘Field-Marshall, I believe you have some personal impression of Professor David Dollenburg’s wife?
‘Which century we talking about?’
The Interrogod replied pointedly, ‘I have a feeling you know, General.’
Over the squawkbox the C-in-C could plainly be heard clearing his throat. ‘As a matter of fact, yes. I am just, ar, putting her face up on the screen now … Yes. A girl from Kuala Lumpur, originally. Moved to Great Britain when she was eight. Outstanding student — considering she had to make the switch from speaking her native Malaysian to English, apparently in seconds. Dollenburg met her while he was lecturing in the United Kingdom, where she was a medical student. Hair dark and sort of crunchy thick; eyes alert, humourous but discriminating; figure —’
The Chromosome Game Page 3
