The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  In some ways, Selly was downright immature, a state not at all to be admired. She did not think him fit to live in the wonderful architectural fantasy of their upper-class settlement; he was an eyesore. They all had very small apartments, but it was one of the best specialist settlements in existence. The upper classes needed the stimulus of interesting surroundings, and interest had been taken well toward the limits both visually and kinetically. Their settlement was famous for its dissolving architecture; at any moment a balcony might disappear and drop people to their deaths. This did not happen so often that it was monotonous, but often enough to make living there exciting. In historical times, those people living on fault lines must have been exhilarated in much the same way, Marvene reflected. How ghastly it must be to live in the utilitarian warrens of the lower classes! Would society never find a humane way of ridding itself of all those surplus people left over since human labor had become almost redundant? Marvene profoundly hoped so: they were an anchor to a civilization that needed to sail ahead.

  If Selly was successful even with the potatoes, he would become a very high-ranking upper-class person. They considered him a totally unsuitable candidate for this because of his vulgarity. But whatever they thought, it was necessary to apply the art of flattery. He was always susceptible.

  “Selly, I feel constrained to voice my admiration for your working method today. You are so stylish in your approach to what must feel like mundane tasks to one so advanced as yourself. I wish very much to cultivate your self-control.” Marvene smiled sweetly at him through her diamante-effect contact lenses. The twinkling was a stunning effect, and hid real feeling. Selly was not susceptible to female charm, but in his genetic makeup somewhere there must surely have been a response to beauty, for once, just once, he had reached out to touch Marvene’s hair, which had been trained to move constantly in shining coils, always changing its shape like a mass of slowly dancing snakes. Strictly speaking she was reaching above her present level of society with such styles, but sometimes beauty was forgiven social errors. Because she made such a beautiful model she had managed to get it done free, but she had been obliged to have all the actichips inserted in her skull with only local anaesthetic.

  “Thank you, Marvene. I’m glad you appreciate the difference between mere routine work well done and a truly aesthetic approach to the mundane. I may be able to give you some instruction on that.”

  “Selly, I would be so grateful if you could. If I could only emulate you…”

  “Marvene, it is all inner work. One has to control the entire self in order to properly control things like grace and care.” He didn’t really have grace, she thought, he was just lethargic.

  “If you talk to yourself, Marvene, daily, and draw all your energies in toward your working self every morning, you will be able to bring more presence to your work.” This wholly patronizing speech was typical and it made her angry. She already did this rather commonplace exercise every morning. She had presence and style, and knew it, and she practiced attitudes toward the day when she meant to grace the highest levels of society. When Marvene had completed her research she would not only have put horrible Selly down, but have a weapon which could forever quell invaders, preventing war, and could possibly be used to keep the lower classes permanently occupied, if not eliminated. She would be remembered.

  They already had the means of fixing Selly and of testing out their work at the same time, but for mass use they needed a foolproof method of dissemination which would disperse itself in a population per body weight and type equally everywhere. If they could only have had a few humans to experiment upon, the job would by now have been done; but there was still too much opposition to human experimentation to make it popular, and it was certainly illegal to use human beings without their recorded consent, and this applied even to the lower classes, a very atavistic area of the law. With this work they hoped to justify human experimentation and thus earn the gratitude of scientists everywhere whose work was held up for lack of suitable material.

  Selly was an ideal subject, being so predictable and stable in his habits, and in having no close friends. Selly could not be bothered with friends. He occasionally arranged some social life, of course, buying a dinner party for himself in some exotic building, but these occasions were only meant to keep his name in circulation and to impress the influential. It was always necessary to keep in favor in order to get financial patronage. He was ideal because any noticeable effects must be observed only by themselves until such time as they wished it otherwise.

  “You know, Marvene,” said Janos, showing his small and boringly ordinary teeth in a slow smile of what in a stronger personality would have been consummate awfulness, “I have to admire Selly for his independence of other people, especially women.”

  “And what’s so good about that?” she demanded icily, fire flashing off her eyeballs. “I don’t see where the style is, in being by yourself. There’s nobody to appreciate a lone person. One needs other opinions.”

  Janos chose to overlook her anger, regarding it as one might a bit of flatus. “If you’re good enough and know it, then nobody is going to think better of you than yourself,” he replied. He had that relentless argumentative tone in his voice that she had once found very attractive, believing it to be self-assurance. It was certain that nobody was going to think better of Marvene and Janos than themselves. Marvene still required that the whole of society admire her, as soon as possible. So did Janos, of course; he was indulging in conceit with his words. He did not know it but he had managed without her good opinion for years.

  “I have to disagree. An isolated opinion is not valid, especially when the subject cannot see the self from outside, which is a rare achievement. How can you ever really know what impression you are making?”

  “I have practiced projecting myself, metaphorically speaking, and using my imagination to know what impression I am making. Doesn’t everyone do that, Marvene?”

  “Of course, but it is a matter of degree and skill. It will still be a heavily subjective result.”

  He did not like that idea, clearly. “If you persist in making destructive statements against me, I shall be obliged to be rude to you.”

  This formal warning was rather extreme, so she knew she had gone too far. He didn’t have good style and tended to think that all negative statements reflected upon him. He must be guilty about something, she thought.

  “I apologize. I had not meant the statement to be destructive, merely in opposition.”

  He gave her a conciliatory nod, the kind meant to conceal the atmosphere, but his gestures always had a patronizing tone that ruined the effect. She must find stylish ways of dealing with him, and was indeed working upon that.

  Another problem was the question of reversibility in the chromosome interference. Perhaps the answer lay where she thought it did, in electronic control, but that posed problems for the masses. Not difficult for one subject, and things would go a stage at a time. She was determined not to rush. After a while, Janos seemed to have recovered from their little contretemps, for he suddenly suggested that they buy a dinner party for themselves for the following night, and he suggested that with luck it might be possible to get somewhere in a fashionable building, perhaps the Cairns or the Herberg Suite? Here was proof that he required the admiration of a crowd, but she let it pass and instead complimented him on his wonderful idea. They set about compiling a guest list, an unusual thing for them to do during working hours.

  They already had a few well-thought-of people on their social list, and several who might demean themselves for an evening. All their acquaintances were bioengineers: it was rare to meet anyone outside one’s own discipline; there was not enough time. This was a price all talented people had to pay, but the rewards were greater than the penalties. They had been awarded knowledge implants as well as memory reinforcement grafts in their youth, which enhanced their natural brilliance and capacity for application. Everyone preferred a hard life to t
he appalling possibility of being in the lower classes, who had little in their lives except prescribed entertainment. They had very little spare time, so she should feel privileged that he proposed using some of his time with her, but as it was not done to give a party without a member of the opposite sex as cohost, she did not make too much of the situation. She liked playing hostess and knew herself excellent at the task. When the overworked upper classes relaxed, they tried always to make the occasion rare without always being monotonously outrageous. So what theme had he thought of?

  “Animals. Fancy dress.” She smiled with glittering delight, her hair seeming to express a rise in her spirits. But it would be impossible for everyone to obtain a costume in time for the following night. He looked annoyed and downcast; he did not want to postpone the occasion.

  “Why not have animals but not costumes—ask everyone to mime?”

  After a few tense moments his face showed reluctant pleasure. Fun, but not too spectacular. They must never be accused of self-aggrandizement. They got out all the invitations and replies of acceptance and ordered the Herberg Suite to be done out to have the appearance of a twenty-second-century zoological garden at a time when animals had not been so rare. The food would be in feeding trays and the drink in gravity feeders.

  They were especially pleased to have Selly’s acceptance. To have Selly behaving like an animal in public at their expense would afford them some glee. What animal would he mime? They were sure they could guess. In order to have plenty of energy for the party, they retired early and did not return later for more work.

  The lab was at rest, and Lupus the Loop lay coiled on his simulated branch in the simulated moonlight, smiling to himself, for had he not been eavesdropping on them every night for months?

  —

  The party was a great success. Within the general benevolent atmosphere there were memorable moments. The sight of two well-known agriculturalists, who had made their name as the team that caused real animal fur to grow on sheets of plastic, behaving like a couple of Nubian goats was worth remembering. It seemed that they could cheerfully mime mating for hours without being vulgar, and very convincingly in spite of their very creative human appearance. They were both quite hairless and had gold eyeballs and teeth and nails, but their acting was so convincing that few had to ask what they were.

  Janos made a wonderful mouse. He nibbled his way through his food, delightfully twitching some imaginary whiskers. His very ordinary appearance seemed to fit the mouse image. He had never indulged in even so much as a tattoo to decorate his person, just like the lower classes who were obliged by law to wear uniforms and were prohibited from any form of distinguishing mark. Janos, the little gray mouse, nibbling away at fame with determination.

  And Selly, the great scientist, being what she had hoped he would be, a cat. He rubbed round people’s legs in a feline manner, getting tidbits dropped for him, and being stroked and fondled, although someone made the joke of treating him like a lab cat, miming the drilling of holes into the skull. He went so far as to jump onto someone’s lap and attempt to curl up, his great bulk hanging down on all sides, making the catness of cats seem very droll indeed. Fat, satisfied, smug, comfort-loving, lethargic Selly. It suited him. He could make a purring noise and wash his face with the back of his wrist, where his watch lay embedded in his wristbone. This instrument gave not only astronomical information, longitude and latitude, time and date, but the state of his brain waves, blood sugar, and noradrenalin. Few people still had these things embedded, for they had proved to be painful to many people in later years. Marvene stroked Selly cat and told him what a lovely pussy he was.

  “This is a lovely party, Marvene. I shall remember this for a long time,” purred the monster feline.

  “And I also,” said the man beneath Selly in a breathy manner. “This is a wonderful idea; I shall tell everyone about this.” Marvene glowed with pleasure then, thinking that it had been worth the trouble if they were to be favorably talked about. Even the most brilliant upper-class people did not get funds if they were not in circulation.

  Marvene felt she should do a little more about acting a snake. She began to hypnotize a female frog who had hopped over to her and sat crouched at her feet blowing a pouch and staring vacantly. Marvene slowly wound herself around the creature, who put hands over eyes as frogs in danger will, a clever touch. Marvene’s extreme yoga lessons had kept her supple enough to coil backward around another human being and to mime squeezing the life out of the frog, the proportion of the creatures not detracting from their dual performance. Everyone seemed suitably amused.

  A rhinoceros, more usually an invertebrate engineer, came over to congratulate her.

  “You have a gift as an actress as well as a scientist,” he grunted, swinging his invisible horn about on a great head, peering with little eyes full of stupid malevolence which was really a gaze of intellectual penetration. She liked the rhino-man; she was dazzled by his achievements and creations. His most famous work was the culturing of a hybrid toxicaria which could be absorbed in spore form through human skin and, when mature, grow to twenty feet long with the ability to bore through bone, disposing rather definitely of any enemy unlucky enough to pick up its invisible spores. He had also, of course, developed an immunity for the aggressor. And this was not all he had done to improve the world. He had written a whole series of papers on parasites of the universe, and presented one of the most controversial theories of the millennium. He was an authority on evolution and had shown, conclusively for many, that Homo sapiens, far from being the highest product of a chain of events, was intended to be the lowest in another chain of events, but when the Sol system had been cut off in a crucial period in its development in order to quarantine it, that destiny had not been fulfilled. The Aldebaran Apple People had not wanted parasites, and indeed, not everyone on Earth relished the idea that humanity’s true end was as a kind of maggot, burrowing through giant fruit.

  The party was made complete with a tragic ending. A serious accident or fatality always lent interest to the story of a party. For some, the main game of an evening was to walk home, the buildings being more active at night. There was a far higher risk of a step collapsing beneath the foot or a balcony disappearing, leaving a person teetering on the edge of death with no choice but to jump—there was no rescue system; that would have taken the element of chance out of the game. A few people did not care for this entertainment, but they became impossible to socialize with, cowardice being so disgusting, and they were often relegated to live in the safe lower-class architecture. So a courageous woman who had mimed a dove all evening plummeted to her death on the deep glass floor below, showing that her miming did not extend to real flight. Exhilarated, Marvene and Janos walked home in amicable silence. Next day, everything was back to normal and both Selly’s work and their own proceeded steadily.

  They had made excellent progress, and Marvene knew that it was her insight which had made possible the step in personally controlling the subject. Selly needed a few more “doses” to give them conclusive proof. But it was to be admitted that they had taken this line from original ideas of Selly’s. He had connections with espionage and had thought that if a human being could be made temporarily to behave as an alien in all respects, including instinctive behavior, there would be no chance of discovery when spying in other star systems. This of course applied only to those aliens whose outward physiology closely resembled the human. There were several important “human” cultures having totally different metabolism to Homo sapiens and who behaved differently in many respects. For example, the Wilkins Planet race, who were of shining intelligence and naturally extremely advanced (more than humanity in some things) but who loped around at high speed on all fours and who had a mating season once every four of their years.

  Selly had been held up by lack of subjects because, although he had applied for volunteers, he did not trust the authorities to keep his research secret if he explained exactly why he required p
eople, and this was requisite. But Marvene and Janos were ahead of Selly. Everything had depended upon what Selly had not quite seen, which was B/B serotonin pathways through the subelectronic RNA polymerase.

  They had the potion which had made Bottom the Weaver behave like an ass, though they had never heard of him. Selly was to become the cat which he had so obligingly played at the party. She had given him a gift of sweets containing more necessary doses and had the minute control constructed which she could activate whenever she cared to do so.

  She had come up with all these ideas while talking to Lupus the Loop. She often wandered in there to have a chat with him; it was an aid to projecting her thoughts. This was her secret; the other two would have thought her slightly deranged but she trusted her instincts, when controlled with careful thought. Lupus the Loop seemed to tell her things she needed to know.

  “Tell me, Lupus, have you any idea how I can control the newly altered instincts of Selly so that he will not always behave under the new influence?” she had asked the great snake as he lay coiled and smugly full of food.

  “It’s perfectly simple,” the snake had seemed to say. “You will construct a monitor which you will keep in your possession, transmitting impulses that will inhibit or release the metabolic pathways you have interfered with.”

  And it had been that simple in essence, although difficult to effect. An extremely sophisticated form of radio control. Beautiful! She had hugged him in thanks, knowing that of course the idea had come from her own mind. Snakes do not have minds. But even plants sometimes spoke to Marvene, when she was alone with them. She had discovered as a child that you can talk to anything and get a reply, and learned later about the projection of the mind, and had then kept it all secret, for such things were despised by intelligent persons.