The Tomorrow File

by Lawrence Sanders

  “You never stopped talking,” Paul said. “Not for a second.”

  I groaned. “You mean you’ve got it all on tape? Even the eggplants?”

  “Even the eggplants,” Maya giggled. “And the bruises.” “That was interesting,” Paul said. “Nick, do you agree that—” “Please.” I held up a hand. “Let’s have no cut-rate psychoanalysis of my personal hangups. We’re just trying to evaluate a new drug. Do you think my verbal outpouring was a result of the UP?”

  “Nooo,” Paul said slowly. Judiciously. “That particular reaction hasn’t been reported in any other test. I think it was just your conditioning. A desire to give us—if you’ll excuse the expression— a blow-by-blow account. Let’s go through some physical and mental coordination workups now. Seth, how does he look?”

  “Parameters back to normal,” Lucas reported. “Pulse, respiration, and skin temperature just slightly higher, but nothing significant.”

  “You summited, baby,” Maya Leighton said decisively. Enviously? “You really ultimized.”

  A few hours later I was in my bedroom, robed, serving at my desk. Knock at the door; I called out, and Paul entered, carrying his vodka-and-Smack, and bringing me one. .

  “For this relief, much thanks,” I said. “Hamlet.” I took a big gulp. “I’m trying to rough a report on the UP while it’s all fresh. You might send it on to Houston.”

  “Of course. Your posttests proved affirmative. Any late reactions?”

  “Warm lassitude. Pleasant. Slight physical weakness. No mental or psychological effects I can detect. Paul, if possible I’d like them to work on that initial jolt. See if they can mildify it. A slower lead-in would be more effective. Another thing that disturbs me: Shouldn’t I have been physically conscious of the orgasm?”

  Paul computed a moment. Frowning.

  “No,” he said finally. “Not necessarily. The fantasized experience apparently was psychologically satisfying. To such an extent that you summited. While still under the UP, you felt no sense of loss, did you?”

  “No.”

  “And when you came out of it, you felt satiety. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Then your objection now is based on your conditioning to conventional orgasm. Did the UP satisfy you?”

  “Yes. Definitely, yes.”

  “Well, then it achieved the goal. In your case, apparently, the psychological, or psychic, ruled the physical. The effect of the UP won’t be identical on all objects. Some will be aware of physical orgasm. To some objects it might be great art, music, poetry, cruelty, suffering—anything. It’s formulated to be generic.”

  “ Yes. Still, I’d hardly call an involuntary emission the Ultimate Pleasure.”

  “Not even in the context of your fantasy?”

  “Well . . . that’s a thought. It was quite a go. Strange.”

  “Nick, could I—no, no! Don’t hold up your hand. I’m not going to analyze your dream. At least not try to individualize it. But to universalize. . . . The problem, we agreed, is not the UP injection > itself, but the surrounding social and political environments.”

  “So?”

  “Would it be reasonable to interpret your fantasy as one of i submission? Total surrender? ”

  I computed a moment.

  “I think it could be interpreted that way.”

  Paul nodded. Thoughtful.

  “You haven’t had a chance to scan the Houston interviews. But the same factor turns up in a surprising percentage of experimental object tapes.”

  “What factor?” I asked.

  “The slave factor,” he said. Looking at me steadily.

  I blinked at him. I had an unpleasant feeling that he had gone beyond me. That he was off somewhere. In realms I could not appreciate.

  . “Let’s get this straight,” I said to him. “Are you suggesting the slave factor may be primary to Ultimate Pleasure?”

  “Yes,” Paul said. Definitely. “All indicators point that way.”

  “And?”

  “If it proves out, it should give us a valid guide to the essential nature of the political society that might enforce and enhance that pleasure.”

  I stared at him a long moment. He was ahead of me. Computing in spheres that had never concerned me.

  “You have made a giant step,” I said.

  “Yes.” He nodded. “I have. Look, Nick,” he said earnestly, “we agreed a political drug could only function with optimum effect in a society that complements it. Neither of us brainstormed the structure of that society. If, after additional testing, the slave factor in the UP proves to be valid, wouldn’t you say it constitutes a steer to the nature of the society required?”

  I shook my head.

  “Maybe that UP injection does have residual and negative mental effects. Paul, there’s something inoperative in your computing.

  It just doesn’t scan. I don’t know where you’re off. I can’t isolate it.

  I just feel you’re wrong. In any event, assuming what you say is operative, what do you propose now?”

  He hunched forward on his chair. Very serious. Very sincere.

  “Nick,” he said, “this Operation Lewisohn gives us a marvelous opportunity for a field test. About half the staff have already come aboard at Hospice No. 4. The remainder should be reporting in a week or so. What if I call in a miniteam of psychoneurologists from Houston as observers. We divide the staff of Operation Lewisohn into thirds. Mixed disciplines. One-third a control group. One-third on placebos. One-third on the UP. Placebos and UP injections awarded for good service and extended hours. And so forth. Let the psychoneurologists run a computer study. Analyzing hours served, efficiency, morale, physical condition, and so forth. When Operation Lewisohn is over—whether it succeeds or fails— we should have a concretized idea of the value of the UP in a realistic productive situation.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  A year ago, even six months ago, it would have been my idea.

  I checked on the progress of Operation Lewisohn at Hospice No. 4, finalized plans with Joe Wellington for a PR gig through the Midwest, sent three dozen natural roses to Louise Rawlins Tucker, and then returned to GPA-1. There I spent a day serving with Phoebe Huntzinger and her computemiks. They were programming our largest hardware, a King Mk. V, with a 200,000-word English vocabulary, plus additional foreign words and phrases.

  “More, Phoebe,” I said.

  “More?”

  “Pick up a dictionary of profanity and obscenity. Add it to your storage. Shouldn’t be more than a thousand bits.”

  “Profanity and obscenity,” she repeated. “I wish I knew what this was all about.”'

  “It’s better you don’t,” I told her. “Rush your wire link with Denver. The moment it’s through and tested, let me know.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you pull it,” I laughed. “And switch to Alexandria, Virginia. When I tell you.”

  “Whee!” she yelled. Tossing papers into the air. “Insanity incorporated.”

  It wasn’t. Really. It was carefully structured. With a timetable and flow chart. I had called in a project systems em with top security, and he had served on the logistics. We had allowed wiggle room, but as of that date in late April, we were right on schedule. As to equipment and objects. We had prepared fall-back positions and fail-safe alternatives. I was satisfied we were contravening Murphy’s Law.

  The twenty-eighth of April. About 2315.1 was in my apartment at Manhattan Landing. Packing to begin the Midwest PR tour in the morning. Computing how many Somnorifics I might need, when the flasher chimed. Paul came on. Visage grave and pulled. “Paul?” I said. “What is it?”

  “It’s an open line,” he said tensely. “I’ll cheat on what I say. Keep your questions glossed. Got that?”

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “The business in GPA-11. The stamps. Sam’s stakeout. Follow that?”

  “Stakeout? In D. C.?” I asked.

&nbs
p; “Yes. I got all this from Art Roach. He got it from pals in BPS. Not complete. Anyway, about an hour ago, another attempt.”

  “Ohhh,” I breathed.

  “Caught him. One em. Contaminating the adhesive. Follow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tried to put a tranquilizer dart into him. Sam’s servers. But before it worked, he gulped. Suicided. Got that?”

  “I think so. Instant?”

  “No. But he’s stopping. No way. You understand? A mouthful.”

  “That should do it,” I said.

  “You know him,” Paul said.

  “What?'

  “Not know him. But saw him. I knew him. Met him. Talked to him. Raddo. Arthur Raddo. That pale, blond fanatic. At the Beist Christmas meeting.”

  “Oh-oh,” I said. “The wowser.”

  “Yes. Served at Bureau of Printing and Engraving.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No word. As of now. Just him.”

  “Motive?”

  “Not known. Sam is checking.”

  “I can imagine. No doubt?”

  “None. He had a little bottle of the stuff. Five cc. It broke when he fell. A TDT had to move in.”

  I was silent.

  “Nick, it’s not good. The Beist connection.”

  “Maybe no connection at all.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping. Or that the CD will pillow it. Because of you-know-who.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think he was just a loner.”

  “Hope you’re right. But why?”

  “No idea.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Thanks for flashing. Let me know what happens.”

  “Will do. Have a good trip.”

  “Thanks.”

  We switched off.

  Arthur Raddo. The young em with lank blond hair falling untidily over his forehead. Enormous eyes with a fervid stare. Flat lips he licked constantly. Wearing a wrinkled, soiled zipsuit of a PS-5. His physical appearance gave the impression of limp ineffectuality. But his voice was unexpectedly loud, passionate. Still, I was certain he was a frail.

  That was the em who had poisoned thousands of objects in GPA-11.

  But that wasn’t important. At the moment. What was crucial, to me, in Paul’s staccato report, was the 5 cc flask Raddo had been carrying. The bottle that smashed when he suicided. That required calling in a Toxin Decontamination Team. A 5 cc flask of Clostridium botulinum in glycerol.

  I immediately went into the same drill. Pulled on a raincoat. Slogged through a rainy night to B Lab. Down to the third sublevel. Into the pharmacology library. I went through a charade of looking up acetylsalicylic acid in the file computer. Because I remembered 416HBL-CW3 was stored in the restricted section in Room G, Bin 3, Stack 4, Position R.

  I finally buzzed a dozing Vinnie Altman awake. He let me in and I signed the register while he breathed petroport fumes in my face. He wanted to talk. I didn’t.

  I went directly to the room, the bin, the stack, the position. Extracted tooth. A gap. The 5 cc flask was gone.

  I stood there. Staring at that emptiness. Smelling the piercing, pinching odor of manipulation. I had been. That forgery. The 2 cc taken, the bottle left. What else would I do but replace the missing

  liquid? Remove the original file card. Sign a letter to R. Sam Bigelow stating that my visual inspection had verified the original deposit of 416HBL-CW3.

  And when the BPS snoops, alerted by the smashed 5 cc flask in the hand of the stopping Arthur Raddo, decided to check personally on all amounts of Clostridium botulinum issued to research Gruppen in 1988, how would I explain its absence from my pharmacology library? And my official letter stating it was intact and untouched?

  Strangely, my first reaction was admiration. I remembered what Art Roach had said after I had explained how we had broken his arm in order to share him.

  “That was beautiful,” he had breathed.

  So was this. Beautiful.

  Then I felt sick.

  Z-7

  From an address to an international convention of neurobiologists held in Chicago, Illinois, on May 3, 1999:

  “There is no precedent in history for what is happening. Those who look to the Mechanical Revolution 6f the Nineteenth Century or the Technological Revolution of the Twentieth Century for aid in coping with our problems will look in vain.

  “For the Biological Revolution of the Twenty-first Century is unique in human experience. It deals not with materials, equipment, and tools—not with things—but with objects, members of the species Homo sapiens. It is revealing to us not only how to change objects already in existence, but how to alter our own evolution. To change both for the better, I hasten to add, so we might more easily deal with and plan for the radically transformed society that tomorrow will inexorably bring.

  “As neurobiologists, you know there is nothing absolute in human nature. Nothing that cannot be manipulated for the greater health of the individual and the greater good of society. What are these alterations in the corpus we must seek if we are to insure the physical and mental health of citizens of the Twenty-first Century? Suppose we start with the brain, and consider what neurobiological manipulations may be of benefit to the gene pool of the future. . .

  And so forth. And so forth. Kaka.

  Worst of all, I didn’t even have the consoling presence of Samantha Slater’s wormish corpus in my hotel room. At the last moment, Joe Wellington had revised the travel scenario.

  “Sorry, Nick,” he said, “but I need Samantha here in D.C.-ville. HR-316 is coming up for a vote next week; it’s no time to scatter the troops.”

  It was downputting, but l couldn’t stamp my foot and pout. After all, it was for the DCS. As I boarded the jet for Chicago, a slender em in a checkered cap bumped into me. As I entered the hotel lobby in Chicago, a plump em in a checkered cap jostled me.

  A less mentally healthy object might have suffered an onslaught of paranoia. First Joe Wellington’s squelch of my amour propre. Then what might have been a tail by a confederation of checkered-capped enemies. All this on top of the disappearance of the 5 cc flask from my pharmacology library.

  That was no irrational suspicion. The bottle was gone, and I was responsible for it. I had glossed it as best I could by filling that accusing gap in Position R, Stack 4, Bin 3, Room G, with an identical 5 cc flask of pure glycerol. But it was literally a stopgap measure. Temporarily, until R. Sam Bigelow’s noses came to check volume and analyze contents. Before that happened, I would be able to discover who was manipulating me, and for what purpose. I hoped.

  After Chicago, the PR safari moved on to Minneapolis, Omaha, Denver. In the last city, I spent a day at the DIVRAD Field Office with Tom Lee, reviewing his logistic plan for moving Project Phoenix to Hospice No. 4 in Alexandria, Virginia. He had projected well. I made a few minor alterations—more to assert my authority than from any real need for change; a server’s plans are never totally operative—and then gave him the go for the move.

  On to Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Memphis. Speeches, colloquies, interviews, symposia.. My only pleasure was in writing and mailing a letter, every day, to Louise Rawlins Tucker. Addressed to her. Intended for the eyes of Grace Wingate. I wrote, I suppose, many foolish things .But they gave me much joy. I had never bef ore known the happiness of stripping oneself naked in words. Surprisingly therapeutic.

  And eventually, back to Washington, D. C., May 26, 1999. On

  the day I returned, the subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee passed HR-316 with but one dissenting vote. I was in time for a sedate orgy at the home of Penelope Mapes to celebrate our initial victory. I had hoped Chief Director Michael Wingate, and wife, might be present. They were not. But Louise Rawlins Tucker was.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  “She’s lonely,” she said.

  “She got my letters?”

  “Of course.”

  I looked at her wi
th admiration. She was taking a dreadful chance. She turned back to me then. Smile fading. Eyes hardening. Not an ef I’d care to cross.

  “I told you,” she said. I could scarcely hear. “Hurt her, and I’ll—”

  “I know, I know,” I said hurriedly. “I believe you. I have no wish to hurt her. I told you that. And I told her. If something goes wrong, the CD will save her. But you must save yourself.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll worry about it when the time comes. If it does.”

  “It’ll be too late then,” she said. Suddenly, embarrassingly, her eyes filled with tears.

  I stared at that dragoon of an ef. The big, blotchy face. Like seeing a rhino cry. I couldn’t compute it.

  “When may I see her?” I asked softly.

  “Tomorrow. Noon. My home.”

  “I thank you,” I said. And moved away.

  I left the party while Paul and Mary Bergstrom were still there. Carefully computed. I went back to our Chevy Chase home. Directly to Paul’s bedroom. His desk was unlocked. After five minutes’ search, I found the membership list of the Washington, D. C., chapter of the Beists. I was startled by their rapid growth: more than five thousand names. I scanned Arthur Raddo’s address until I was certain I had it. A scurvy neighborhood on Sixth Street.

  I located, with difficulty, two lovable liters of natural California pinot noir. I carried them both to the safe house. One for us; one to be left behind for that stern obso ef who was risking too much for our joy.

  The door was opened to my third ring. For the briefest of microseconds I was panicked by the sight of a stranger. But no, it was Grace Wingate. Wearing the same middy, blue scarf, pleated skirt, white plastivas sneakers she had worn to the Beist meeting the first night we met. What had delayed recognition was a heavy wig of russet hair. Drawn back, braided into a single plait that hung down her back. Thick and long as an em’s arm.

  She laughed delightedly at my astonishment. Whirled to exhibit. The pigtail flung out and struck me lightly across the face. I caught it. Held it to my lips. Thick hair. Strong. Scented.

  “What on earth?” I said.

  “It’s real human hair,” she said eagerly. “Not synthetic. From France, I think. Or Bulgaria. Some place like that. Do you like it, Nick?”