Prisoners of Tomorrow

by James P. Hogan

  On one occasion during the campus period of her life, she found herself representing the opposition to a group of sociology students who claimed to have obtained positive results in a series of ESP card-guessing tests, which they challenged the science fraternity to debate. Paula showed how a comparable score could be derived by matching the results to a selected portion of a random-number string, thus proving once again to the world that sometimes people have lucky streaks, sometimes unlucky, and most of the time they muddle along somewhere in between. The revelation would not have surprised any experienced gambler, but her efforts made little impression on the judges and the editors of the college magazine, who awarded the verdict to the paranormalists on the grounds that “the influence of ESP has not been disproved.” And neither had the existence of Santa Claus ever been disproved, Paula pointed out in disgust, but to no avail.

  Deciding on a career in science or engineering but unable to face the prospect of more years in academia, she followed the family tradition by opting for the services, and joined the Air Force in 2000 at age eighteen. After basic training she entered the USAF electronics school at Keesler AFB, Missouri, qualified there for a grant scholarship, transferred to Communications Command, and went on to complete her doctorate under Air Force sponsorship at the University of Chicago. After that she moved to the Pentagon to work on the performance evaluation of special-purpose military hardware, which involved stints at NASA, Goddard, and the USAF research center at Langley. Life settled down to a fairly humdrum routine in these years, and she relieved the boredom through a protracted affair that she rather enjoyed with a married officer twenty years her senior, called Mike. He was the kind of nonconformist who attracted her, and had earned his promotions through competence rather than the kind of social image-building that was typical in any nation’s peacetime officer corps. But after two years Mike was posted to the Mediterranean, and for a change of scene Paula applied for a posting to Systems Command. She was accepted, and eventually became a specialist in analyzing purloined Russian and East European hardware.

  In all this time her disdain for politics and economics persisted. In her view, for anybody with the brains to see it, breeder reactors and fusion, spaceflight, computers, and genetic engineering had laid Thomas Malthus firmly to rest. There was no longer any necessary reason for people anywhere to starve, or anything logical for them to continue fighting each other over. In fact, wars squandered the resources that could have solved the problems that the wars were supposed to be about. Scientists had been saying for over fifty years that there was plenty of energy and everything else, that the planet wasn’t overcrowded and would never come close, and that modern-day lifestyles were incomparably healthier, safer, more prosperous, and more varied in opportunities than “natural” living had ever been. But nobody told the public. It wasn’t news, and what the media didn’t talk about didn’t exist. Politicians couldn’t see it, or perhaps they pretended not to because it wasn’t the kind of talk that generated fears and attracted funding, and in the course of it all they had created the cultural pessimism that was handing the twenty-first century to Asia. That labeled them in Paula’s book as just about the worst class of people to be running the world.

  And ineptitude seemed to be just as much a mark of whoever was responsible for running the place she was in now, she thought wearily as she sat with her back to the wall on the thinly padded cot and surveyed the austere cell that she’d been cooped up in for she didn’t know how long. The single unshaded bulb in the ceiling was turned down sometimes but was never out, the intervals varying erratically so that she had lost all track of time. They had moved her here from a double cell, where the series of cellmates who had come and gone had been so transparently planted that, on the one occasion since her capture, she had actually laughed out loud. If that was an example of the Russian fiendishness that had kept the West paralyzed for a century, then the West deserved to be eclipsed by Asia, she concluded.

  First there had been Hilda, the East German, with her smile, blond fringe, and baby-doll blue eyes. “I am your friend. It is a mistake that I am here in this place. I know some important people outside, and I can help you after I am released. But first I must know more about you. What is your name? Where are you from? . . .”

  Then there had been Luba, supposedly arrested for spreading subversive propaganda among students in Rostov. Her line had been scare tactics: “They tell the world that they’ve changed their ways, but they haven’t. Nothing has changed. They’re still as bad. They will keep you from sleeping for a week or more, leave you for days in a cell below freezing, and starve you until you can’t stand up. By the time you meet your own people again there will be no marks. But you’ll tell them what they want to know eventually. I like you. I don’t like to think of you doing something like that to yourself. Why not make it easy?”

  But the effect had been the opposite of that intended. Paula’s initial fear had given way to a resolve that stemmed from a growing feeling of contempt. As the interminable interrogations went on without change of tune, and the facade had peeled away from Protbornov and his troupe to reveal them as played-out actors in roles that had become mechanical and stylized. The monotony was not, after all, a deliberate ploy to wear her down, as she’d first thought. In fact it wasn’t anything clever at all. She had vague, incoherent recollections of her interrogators rambling on about religion, social sciences, things that had nothing to do with the present situation—anything to take up time, it seemed. The simple fact was that they had nothing else to say, nowhere left to go, and they were waiting for somebody else to figure out what to do.

  She leaned forward on the cot to pull the blanket up around her shoulders and tuck the edges under her knees. That was another thing: the room was always either too chilly or too hot, but never comfortable. She snorted beneath her breath. Was this really a measure of the opposition she was up against? If so, it wasn’t just mediocre, but infantile. People could do themselves a disservice by overestimating their opponents, she reflected. Maybe the West had been doing just that for a hundred years.

  During the days, weeks, months—however long she’d been shut up—she had occupied herself by going through old debates again in her head. She remembered reading tales of calculating prodigies, and tried devising methods for performing calculations rapidly in her head. There had been a woman in India who could mentally multiply two thirteen-digit numbers in the astounding time of twenty-eight seconds. Paula found the best way was to work from left to right, adding the part sums progressively, rather than from right to left as taught in schools. She wondered if schools taught it that way because it used less paper. She had passed the time playing word games in her head (how many palindromes could she think of?), compiling lists of useless facts (how many place-names start with G?), playing with scientific speculations (what would the world look like if Planck’s constant were a millions times larger?), and reminiscing over events in her life.

  From the time she had spent in Massachusetts, she remembered warm summer Saturday evenings in the waterfront marketplace of downtown Boston, where she went with her occasional dates to walk among the crowds and the sidewalk restaurants, maybe visiting a bar or two before deciding where to have dinner. The hearty locker-room types who made opening gambits by cracking off-color jokes had never lasted long. The ones with something worthwhile to say, and an interest in what she thought, did better. Earnshaw had refused to oblige by fitting into any of her categories. She often wondered what had happened to him since the first of May. Perhaps he was no longer even on Tereshkova.

  The sound of the door being unlocked interrupted her thoughts. It swung inward, and a blank-faced guard with Oriental features stepped through while a second waited outside. “You come now.” Paula sighed, pulled the blanket aside, and stood up. She did her best to smooth her crumpled shirt and slacks, and instinctively brushed the ever-recalcitrant curl of hair from her forehead. The guard moved a step nearer and reached out as if to jostle
her elbow to hurry her. She moved her arm out of the way and glared. The guard hesitated, then stood aside. Paula walked by him, out into the familiar corridor of gray walls and numbered doors.

  They went up a flight of stairs, around a corner, and along another corridor to a narrow hallway with benches by the walls on either side. The doorway into the room that General Protbornov used was open, and Paula could see him already seated behind the desk inside, smoking a cigarette. The guard who had been leading motioned her forward, but before she had moved more than a step a telephone rang inside the room, and another officer appeared in the doorway with his hand raised for her to wait. He closed the door, and Paula drew back. The two guards had reverted to zombie mode and were standing a few yards away, one in each direction along the hall, apparently without much idea of what was supposed to happen next. She sat down on one of the benches to see what they would do. They didn’t do anything.

  Then she became aware of a commotion of raised voices coming from behind one of the other doors. She looked up curiously, and as she did so the door opened partly and a Russian lieutenant started to come out. A woman’s voice called from behind him, unmistakably sarcastic in tone, but Paula could catch only a few of the phrases since her Russian was not fluent. “That’s right, run and call a guard . . . afraid I’ll bite? . . . and we expect you to protect us!”

  “Please sit down,” another man’s voice pleaded from inside.

  The lieutenant turned to talk back into the room. “Look, you said you wanted to talk to somebody with the appropriate qualifications. Well, I’m going to fetch somebody now, all right? As you say, we do not have the qualifications.”

  “You don’t have the sense, you mean,” the woman’s voice retorted. “What do you take me for, a common criminal or something—a pickpocket or a whore? Look, I am a senior scientist from Novosibirsk.” Paula raised her eyebrows. Novosibirsk was one of the major Soviet scientific centers, especially for advanced physics. “Does that mean anything to either of you? I have been brought here because of political protest, which I claim is my right, and I object to the way this is being dealt with. I demand to speak to whoever is in charge of this entire establishment. Don’t you realize this could get you shipped back to Earth and ten years in a camp?”

  “Be patient, if you are capable. I will seek instructions.” The lieutenant turned back from the doorway into the hall. The two guards straightened themselves up. “It’s all right, at ease,” the lieutenant muttered. “See that the bitch in there doesn’t leave.” He saw Paula sitting on the bench. “Oh God, another one.” She watched him walk away along the corridor, shaking his head.

  The lieutenant had left the door open, and through it Paula could hear the voice of the other man who had spoken earlier. “Yes, this is Colonel Tulenshev. I want to know if Sergei Gennadevitch is there. Have you seen him recently? . . . We have a small problem here. See if you can find him and put him on the line, would you? . . . No, it’s not serious, but I would like . . .”

  Then Paula realized that the woman who had been doing the shouting was standing in the doorway. She looked at Paula for a moment, and then, tossing an indifferent glance at the two guards, came out and sat down next to her on the bench. The guards had been told not to let her leave. She wasn’t leaving. So they remained where they were and didn’t intervene.

  The woman was somewhere in her mid-forties, Paula guessed. She had fiery hair, almost orange, tumbling to her shoulders in waves, a firm face with high cheeks, a sharply defined brown, an outthrust determined chin, and clear, unwavering eyes. Her body was full and rounded beneath a tan sweater and brown skirt, and her breast heaved visibly as she recovered her breath. She studied Paula’s face for a few seconds, then muttered something quickly in Russian. Although Paula didn’t catch the words, the tone was sympathetic and curious. A wave of eagerness surged up involuntarily inside Paula, something from deep down, reaching instinctively for the promise of a first true contact with another human being since the day she and Earnshaw were captured. She shook her head and explained that she was a foreigner and hadn’t understood.

  The woman stared at her. “Anglicanka?”

  Paula shook her head again. “Nyet. Amerikanka.”

  “Ah.” The woman nodded slowly and spoke in English, keeping her voice to little more than a whisper. “I heard a rumor of two American spies being arrested a while ago. You were one of them?” Paula shrugged and said nothing. The woman smiled faintly. She leaned closer and rested a hand lightly but reassuringly on Paula’s arm. “Listen to someone who knows them. They will try to frighten you. Don’t let them—it’s just bluff. Stalin has been gone a long time. The fossils in charge of things today are not made of the same stuff. Their whole rotten system is about to fall apart, and they know it. Face up to them. Admit nothing. When they see they can get nowhere, they will give up.”

  Before Paula could reply, the colonel who had been speaking on the telephone inside came out. “What is this?” he thundered at the two guards. “The American woman is under solitary detention. She is not permitted to talk with anyone! Anyone!—Is that clear!” He looked at the Russian woman. “And you, high and mighty as you may think you are, you have not been dismissed to go walking about the building. The general is on his way here now.” He held open the door. The Russian woman rose and went back in, carrying herself proudly and without haste. Just before she disappeared, she turned her head and sent Paula a faint nod of reassurance, as if to stress her words. It had been just a matter of seconds, but, maybe because she needed to so desperately, when Protbornov finally called her into the other room, Paula felt as if some part of the indomitable strength that the Russian woman seemed to radiate had rubbed off on her. She admitted nothing. They threatened; she defied them. It was the same the next time, and the next.

  And finally, as the Russian woman had predicted, the interrogators gave up. They informed Paula one day that she would be going elsewhere, pending further directions from Moscow. She was to be moved, they told her, to a place called Zamork.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  With smoke billowing around them from a German tank burning in the street below, two Red Army infantrymen with tommy guns slung across their backs clambered to the rooftop of the shell-scarred Reichstag building in Berlin and unfurled a Soviet flag. The theme music rose to a triumphant crescendo, and the camera closed in on the hammer-and-sickle emblem flying proudly on red against a background of three Stormoviks crossing the sky in formation.

  Applause spattered from the more appreciative among the audience as the lights brightened. The Saturday night movie in B Block mess area was over. It had been about a Russian James Bond figure from the days of the “Great Patriotic War,” called Stirlitz, who infiltrated the Nazi SS and sabotaged an attempt by Heinrich Himmler and Allen Dulles, then the head of American intelligence in Europe, to make a separate peace in the West in early 1945. Such an arrangement would have allowed the Nazis to concentrate their remaining forces against the Soviet Union—and after Hitler was removed, the film implied, would have prepared the way for the Americans, British, and Germans to join forces against Russia in a typically treacherous bid to protect their capitalist interests.

  The rows in front of the screen dissolved into groups of prisoners dispersing to carry their chairs back to their various billets, and the guards who had been watching from the back returned to their duties. McCain was walking alongside Peter Sargent, when Oskar Smovak caught up with them. “So, there you are,” Smovak told them. “Now you’ve seen it for yourselves—how Stirlitz saved us from you scheming Americans and British. We don’t know how much we have to thank our leaders and the Party for, eh?” McCain never knew whether or not to take Smovak seriously. Stirlitz was obviously fictitious, and the story as depicted bore only a remote connection to the events that had actually taken place.

  “You don’t really believe all that, do you?” Sargent said incredulously. From their conversations, McCain had come to suspect that he was connec
ted with Western intelligence, too.

  “Stirlitz has become legendary among the Russians,” Smovak said. “A lot of them accept him as real, without any question.”

  “Yes, and everything else that it said, by association,” Sargent replied.

  “How do you know it wasn’t so?” Smovak challenged. “The Russians get their brand of bullshit. You get your own bullshit. How do you know which is right. How do know any of it is?”

  “When the Moscow Film Studio can make a movie that doesn’t have to be passed by Party censors before you can see it, then come and talk about it,” Sargent said. He upended the chair he was carrying and turned toward the stairway leading to the upper level. The others continued walking to the door of B-3 and entered the billet to a frenzied accompaniment of red flashes and beeps. In the mess area behind them, a deeper note sounded from a klaxon to signal five minutes to go before in-billets—the time for the mess area to be cleared and everyone inside. Lights-out would be one hour later. There was little of the roll-calling that had characterized earlier prison environments. Counting and checking that people were in the right places was performed automatically by remote computers monitoring the electronic bracelets that everyone wore.