“Don’t call the police, you’ll frighten him off. I’ll be there in ten minutes. And don’t open the door for him no matter what! What’s your address again?”
Pellegrini darted across to the waiter, taking out his police badge on the way.
“You got a car? Or a scooter or motorbike? It’s urgent!”
“Yes, yes. A car. It’s out there in the car park, the company car.”
“The keys, right now! I’m from the police! I’ll bring it back later.”
The waiter ran to get the keys and a minute later the commissioner was hurtling in the direction of Pascal’s home.
A dumbfounded patron watched the car go with his mouth hanging open. He had never seen anything like that in respectable Monaco.
Pellegrini pushed the car at top speed. He stopped one block from Pascal’s house and ran, keeping as close to the wall as possible. In the evening light, he was barely visible. He glanced at his watch: eleven minutes had gone by. Everything was quiet at Pascal’s house. Aha, so he had got here ahead of Isaac! He knocked on the door quietly, dialing Pascal’s number at the same time.
“Pascal, it’s me. Everything’s fine, open up. But quietly.”
“Just a second.”
First of all, the commissioner glanced quickly round the room.
“Turn off the light, so he won’t spot me from outside.”
Pascal meekly turned the light off.
“Phew,” said the commissioner, catching his breath. “Bring me a glass of water, please.”
Pascal went to the kitchen for the water. The commissioner watched him go, feeling annoyed. “Oh, these Veggies. I dashed here, but he’s moving like a tortoise. In no hurry to get anywhere.” Pascal came back, carrying a glass in trembling hands.
“Don’t worry, I’m here now,” the commissioner reassured him and downed the water. “Did he call again?”
“No, he didn’t call. But he said he was coming. You got here very quickly. Thank you, commissioner.”
The commissioner’s legs and arms suddenly felt heavy. His eyelids were closing, he was falling asleep.
“Why, you bastard,” was the last thing he had time to think before he blacked out.
Chapter nine
Pellegrini woke up with his head throbbing violently. He tried to get up, but couldn’t because his hands and feet were bound tightly to his chair.
“You’ve come around, dear commissioner,” he heard a polite voice say.
Pellegrini peered at the speaker. A late-middle-aged man holding a cigar... And then a jolt of recognition seared him like an electric shock: sitting there in front of him was the famous Professor Link in his own person! The one who had disappeared without a trace!
The professor continued calmly:
“At last, you and I can talk in a calm setting since you know, you’re always in pursuit. On your side commissioner, you have all the technology and thousands of brains, including the best in the police. On our side, we have only four creative, high IQs and a longing for a free life. Almost even odds, right?” the professor winked slyly. “But we have won. How are you feeling?”
“Does that matter?” the commissioner asked venomously.
“Of course. We’re human beings and exceedingly humane ones. Which cannot be said of machines. Computing machines.”
“In that case, I wouldn’t mind a glass of water.”
“Sparkling or still? Local or Italian?”
“Without any poison!”
“What poison? It was a standard sedative. The latest generation. Your head will stop hurting in a couple of minutes. So would you like French or Italian water?” asked Link again with a smile.
Apparently the professor knew about Pellegrini’s career setbacks due to his Italian name. But how did he, the commissioner wondered. It was Pellegrini’s secret grudge, one he had always kept to himself and never shared with anyone. And from out of this grudge grew a great and powerful resentment of all nationalist blockheads. With his professional attention to detail, Pellegrini realized that for some reason this was no secret to the professor.
“When did you go digging into my head?”
The commissioner forgot the condition he was in for a moment and almost barked at the professor in his interrogation voice. He had been an interrogator many times, but this was his first time in the position of a detainee. Well, or a prisoner, which wasn’t all that different. Checking himself, the commissioner relaxed his shoulders slightly and glanced imperturbably round the room. Isaac and Pascal and Bikie were here. So they were all in it together. Pascal wasn’t a victim at all!
“Bring me a double espresso with brown sugar and a croissant,” Pellegrini said in the most brazen and provocative voice he could manage.
“Isaac, bring the commissioner some water and a cup of coffee. With a straw,” Link added and turned back to Pellegrini. “I haven’t been digging into your head, it contradicts our basic principle. At this stage, we are opposed to the use of other people’s thoughts or collective thoughts. It is simply that, as often happens after the sleeping drug that Pascal slipped in your water, you were slightly delirious and you let slip one of your closest secrets.
“In this case, you spoke abusively for a long time, expressing your grievances by using the words ‘Frenchmen’, ‘Italy’ and ‘surname’. As your opponent, I have studied you quite closely, and it wasn’t hard to guess what you meant.”
“That’s contemptible!” said Pellegrini, turning scarlet.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about: it is of no interest to me, and I didn’t eavesdrop on you deliberately. I simply came in to check on your condition. In a moment, you’ll have your coffee.”
The muscles of the captive’s face relaxed slightly, forehead lines smoothed out. The professor saw that the commissioner was starting to calm down.
“Will you give me the croissant through a straw too?” Pellegrini drawled caustically. “Is there anyone here to chew it up for me, apart from rats?”
“There now, see how useful it is to have imagination,” Link commented in the soothing voice of a pediatrician. “You can even compare people you don’t like with rats. Soon you’ll be able to eat whatever you want but that’s if you want to, of course. Very soon, so you’ll have to wait a little bit for the croissant, especially since its evening now, and croissants are only served at breakfast here.”
The skilled policeman in Pellegrini suddenly had a bad feeling. Link was standing there in front of him, alive and kicking. Pascal and Isaac weren’t hiding the fact that they were working together: this all meant trouble.
“Dead men don’t eat whatever they want,” the commissioner summed up.
“Dead men? Oh, come now, commissioner! We’re scientists, not murderers! We’re not going to kill you.”
“Oh, sure. Then why have you suddenly decided to reveal all your secrets? To make my job easier?”
“Firstly, we don’t intend to reveal all our secrets to you. And secondly, by morning, you will be entirely harmless to us.”
“For rats a good rat catcher is always dangerous,” the commissioner hissed through his teeth.
“Isaac, is the helmet ready? Link asked, then turned to the commissioner and continued imperturbably. “We tried to decide what to do with you for a long time, and then we had an idea, which, as you’ll appreciate, is rather brilliant in its own way.”
Pellegrini was really annoyed by the professor’s smile, but he didn’t show it, not blinking an eye.
“We are humane individuals. Of course, we can’t let you go, but we won’t keep you prisoner. We’ll hold a ‘Link court’ over you, they used to ‘lynch’ people, now we’ll ‘link’ you…” the professor smiled at his own joke. “And you’ll go back to your job.”
Despite the commissioner’s most intense efforts, an expression of surprise appeared on his face. Isaac put the helmet on Pellegrini’s head and explained.
“Now your OE will serve the world together with many talented minds, but sepa
rate from you, unfortunately, or more precisely, from your brain. You’re a great supporter and even defender of the program, now you’ll have a chance to be involved in it for a while.”
“You won’t dare,” the commissioner said in a dry, tense voice.
“Why not? Believe me, it will all be done fair and square. We’ll measure your creativity level and calculate its price. You’ll sign a standard contract with your instructions and wishes. And Pascal will transfer the standard fee to you. You’ll find him very interesting to talk to, by the way. He was a Veggie to, not so very long ago.”
“What do you mean, was?”
“He was, but he isn’t any longer. Now he’s a normal person again,” Isaac said, smiling.
“But how? That’s impossible.”
“Impossible for some, entirely realistic for others.”
“You won’t dare,” hissed the commissioner again, turning pale.
A large piece of the jigsaw suddenly fitted into place in his mind. If not for his hundred-per-cent certainty that Happies didn’t come back, of course, he would have realized that Pascal was too strange for a Happy. It was obvious, that his behavior was different. Right through the interview with Pascal, the commissioner had been haunted by a strange feeling that he was normal. But who could ever have thought it? The commissioner had clung so tightly to the idea of extortion, that he had totally neglected this suspicious point.
“Why not, commissioner? Surely it is only humane to bring you closer, so to speak, to your ideals?” said Isaac, calmly continuing to attach wires to the helmet, but Pellegrini was already thinking of something else and didn’t try to argue.
“Hey! Commissioner!” Pascal called, rousing Pellegrini from his stupor. “I have something to tell you. I’ll reassure you. I was a Veggie and I looked happy. You will too. I spent over two years as a boiled vegetable, it was like a dreamless sleep, you know? I don’t remember anything about those years, anything at all! Being a Veggie is like being in a coma. You won’t feel a thing and you won’t understand a thing. And where there is no understanding, there is no fear. You’ll become a blissful fool who won’t be bothered by any discrepancies in the behavior of that liar Isaac, or that strange Veggie Pascal. That’s what it will be like. Now isn’t that wonderful?”
The commissioner followed Pascal’s words with a struggle. He was barely in a fit state to listen. For probably the first time in his life, he was genuinely frightened. He realized they wouldn’t let him go.
Initially, when he understood that these people were not capable of murder he somewhat relaxed, but what he heard after that, made him change his mind. They won’t let him go, it was clear because otherwise they wouldn’t have told him the whole truth. And was it the whole truth?
“Hey, Pellegrini, wake up! There is one piece of really good news,” said Isaac, trying to bring the commissioner to his senses. “Our ultimate goal is to return the energy to all the Happies, so think of this as a kind of medium-term leave, six months to a year, I hope no longer than that. Fill out the contract, please. Write the instructions, and I promise to deliver them to your relatives. They’ll take you to California, or Hawaii, or Florida, or Goa. Nothing personal, this is a battle of ideas.”
A foggy swamp, a thunderstorm. That was how Pellegrini could have described his train of thought. Flashes of light and total confusion, a kaleidoscope of pictures flashing through his mind: his sister Janette, his god-daughter, the Eiffel Tower seen through the window, salmon fettuccini, his office in the Department and a Happy settlement. Himself and Gautier together.
“I’d rather shoot myself. I’m an officer and I have the right to choose.”
His mouth seemed to pronounce the words on its own as if it was his sub consciousness speaking.
“An interesting shift in your life philosophy,” said Isaac, surprised. “Only half an hour ago you were prepared to tear us to pieces for the sake of your ideals, and you’ve renounced them so easily.”
Pellegrini’s mouth went dry, he had to respond to that.
“My ideal has always been the world in which there is no crime or violence. I’m not renouncing that world. And I’m not the only one in this room who has shifted his philosophy of life! I think this is your invention, Professor Link?” Pellegrini glowered at the professor. “Why have you suddenly changed your mind and organized an entire underground movement as well?”
“Unfortunately, commissioner, I created a monster. It has given the world many things that are beautiful. The planet has taken a miraculous booster pill, you could say. Became healthier, stronger. But I’m afraid the remedy has side effects that I now have to put right.”
“What are these side effects if you will pardon my curiosity?”
“Pascal has told you everything already,” the professor replied sadly. “The condition of being a Happy is not a real life. It’s a new form of coma. The people die, not physically but emotionally, so to speak. The brain doesn’t work any longer. No memories, as it turns out. We’ve given Pascal his OE back, as you see. But what we’ve really done is brought him back from the afterworld. Believe me, it wasn’t easy for me to admit that.”
“Maybe you did something wrong when you returned his energy and accidentally erased his memory?”
“Now that is why we didn’t go to the police,” Isaac answered for the professor. “Someone would say we returned the energy incorrectly, someone else would suggest we were conducting additional research. Do you think it would be easy for the Agency to renounce the power like that? Can you recall any similar instances from history? And what if they declare us insane and stick us in a madhouse? The fact that all children of Veggies have a zero level of creativity doesn’t seem to have stopped the downloading.”
“But not all the children are born Veggies!”
“Have you done any DNA paternity tests on them? Why have you decided that both parents are definitely Veggies?”
“Well, that’s really getting ridiculous, young man,” Pellegrini tried to protest.
“No Sir, I’d call it ‘assessing the risks soberly’,” Isaac replied firmly.
“If we give another thousand Happies their creativity back, it will be an indisputable fact. Not an isolated case that they could interpret any way they like. Think about it. Without the professor, the back transfer will be declared unscientific, because it wasn’t carried out in proper laboratory conditions, for instance. And if we present the professor to them, we know they’ll stick him away the next day. And who’ll actually do it? The terrorists or the security services? And they could even cast doubt on Link’s statement. How can you prove that the transferring back the OE was carried out correctly? They could dispute the fact that Pascal was ever a Veggie. Maybe he’s a con artist who got hold of some money and then coolly pretended to be a Veggie? If our plan fails, of course, we’ll tell all of this to the police. And to the journalists as well.”
“Well, yes…” Pellegrini couldn’t help but agree with Isaac’s reasoning. Going to the police didn’t guarantee anything. Except that to start with, they would all be placed under arrest. After all, a theft had been committed, even if an unusual one.
“Listen, Isaac, I have a god-daughter, I have a sister. I have to think about them in the first instance.”
“No problem. Think. If everything goes smoothly, you won’t be a Veggie for all that long.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Commissioner,” Isaac said with a smile, “It seems to me that are you starting to root for us to succeed!”
Pellegrini caught himself thinking that that was exactly right. He was worried they wouldn’t succeed, and he would remain a Veggie forever and this thought was unbearable.
“Just imagine, practically all the Happies had relatives, people near and dear to them, friends. Had. Because someone who becomes a Veggie is an emotional corpse,” put in Pascal, who didn’t want anyone to become a Veggie, not even his enemy the commissioner. “The most terrible thing is that someone who has turne
d into a Veggie is no longer himself. And you must admit, Pellegrini, that the only thing a person has is himself. Ultimately. Every person is an immense world or, to put it less grandly, every person is a radar station. He beams out waves around himself, those are his actions, ideas, interactions with other people. And from the way these waves come back to him, from the feedback, a person evaluates the way he lives. So there are billions of radar stations on earth, each one radiating and evaluating. Each one living by making sense of the signals that it receives. Each one of a billion separately, and all doing it together. Thinking about it can drive you crazy. A Veggie is a radar station that can’t send out radar beams. I wonder, is it possible to imagine a crueler act of violence than taking away a person’s own self? Turning him into a walking device for processing food?”
Pellegrini listened attentively to Pascal, trying to imagine his own future condition. He had come to terms with the idea that he was inevitably going to become a Happy, although still dreaded it.
“I decided to download for the sake of the woman I loved,” Pascal continued. His hands were trembling and tears welled in his eyes. “But she left me in less than three months. And I didn’t even try to stop her. I couldn’t care less! I really, really care now, but that ship has sailed! She’s been with someone else for ages! You can’t imagine what it’s like to fall asleep in the arms of the woman you love, then wake up in the morning and realize that she’s already been with someone else for a year!”
Pellegrini lowered his head. He wouldn’t have wished on his worst enemy the fear he was feeling now. How he hoped that everything would work out for this damned Isaac!
Bikie picked up a pile of clean sheets of paper off the table and held them out to Pellegrini.
“You can write a letter to the top brass in UNICOMA. You’re important for them, you work in the main department that collaborates with them directly. Write and tell them they’ve made a mistake and they have to put it right. And write to the Minister of the Interior too. It might help us if the operation fails.”
“We’ll leave you for a short while,” Link concluded, taking the helmet off the commissioner’s head. “I’m sure you need some time on your own.”
Collective Mind Page 29
