Svengaard stared at the Optiman. In spite of the tone of the question, the square, heavy-boned face appeared reassuring, calming. “I’ll do anything I can to help you,” Svengaard said. “Anything. But how can I help or answer you when I don’t know what you want?”
Calapine started to speak, but stopped as Nourse raised a hand.
“Our most profound wish is that we could tell you,” Nourse said. “But surely you know we can have no true discourse. How could you understand what we understand? Can a wooden bowl contain sulphuric acid? Trust us. We seek what is best for you.”
A sense of warmth and gratitude permeated Svengaard. Of course he trusted them. They were the genetic apex of humankind. And he reminded himself: “They are the power that loves us and cares for us.”
Svengaard sighed. “What do you wish of me?”
“You have answered all our questions,” Nourse said. “Even our non-questions are answered.”
“Now, you will forget everything that has happened here between us,” Calapine said. “You will repeat our conversation to no person.”
Svengaard cleared his throat. “To no one … Calapine?”
“No one.”
“Max Allgood has asked that I report to him on—”
“Max must be denied,” she said. “Fear not, Thei Svengaard. We will protect you.”
“As you command,” Svengaard said. “Calapine.”
“It is not our wish that you think us ungrateful of your loyalty and services,” Nourse said. “We are mindful of your good opinion and would not appear cold nor callous in your eyes. Know that our concern is for the larger good of humankind.”
“Yes, Nourse,” Svengaard said.
It was a gratuitous speech, its tone disturbing to Svengaard, but it helped clear his reason. He began to see the direction of their curiosity, to sense their suspicions. Those were his suspicions now. Potter had betrayed his trust, had he? The business with the accidentally destroyed tape had not been an accident. Very well—the criminals would pay.
“You may go now,” Nourse said.
“With our blessing,” Calapine said.
Svengaard bowed. And he marked that Schruille had not spoken or moved during the entire interview. Svengaard wondered why this fact, of itself, should be a suddenly terrifying thing. His knees trembled as he turned, the acolytes flanking him with their smoking thuribles, and left the hall.
The Tuyere watched until the barrier dropped behind Svengaard.
“Another one who doesn’t know what Potter achieved.” Calapine said.
“Are you sure Max doesn’t know?” Schruille asked.
“I’m sure,” she said.
“Then we should’ve told him.”
“And told him how we knew?” she asked.
“I know the argument,” Schruille said. “Blunt the instrument, spoil the work.”
“That Svengaard, he’s one of the reliable ones,” Nourse said.
“It is said we walk the sharp edge of a knife,” Schruille said. “When you walk the knife, you must be careful how you place your feet.”
“What a disgusting idea,” Calapine said. She turned to Nourse. “Are you still hobbying da Vinci, dearest?”
“His brush stroke,” Nourse said. “A most exacting discipline. I should have it in forty or fifty years. Soon at any rate.”
“Provided you’ve placed each step correctly,” Schruille said.
Presently, Nourse said, “Sometimes, Schruille, you allow cynicism to carry you beyond the bounds of propriety.” He turned, studied the instrument gauges, sensors, peek-eyes and read-outs across from Calapine on the inner wall of the globe. “It’s reasonably quiet today. Shall we leave the control with Schruille, Cal, and go down for a swim and a pharmacy session.”
“Body tone, body tone,” Schruille complained. “Have you ever considered doing twenty-five laps of the pool instead of twenty?”
“You say the most astonishing things of late,” Calapine said. “Would you have Nourse upset his enzyme balance? I fail completely in my attempts to understand you.”
“Fail to try,” Schruille said.
“Is there anything we can do for you?” she asked.
“My cycle has plunged me into dreadful monotony,” Schruille said. “Is there something you can do about that?”
Nourse looked at Schruille in the prismatic reflector. The man’s voice with its suggestion of a whine had grown increasingly annoying of late. Nourse was beginning to regret that community of tastes and bodily requirements had thrown them together. Perhaps when the Tuyere’s service was done …
“Monotony,” Calapine said. She shrugged.
“There’s a certain triumph in well-considered monotony,” Nourse said. “That’s Voltaire, I believe.”
“It sounded like the purest Nourse,” Schruille said.
“I sometimes find it helpful,” Calapine said, “to invoke a benign concern for the Folk.”
“Even among ourselves?” Schruille asked.
“Consider the fate of the poor computer nurse,” she said. “In the abstract, naturally. Can you not feel sorrow and pity?”
“Pity’s a wasteful emotion,” Schruille said. “Sorrow is akin to cynicism.” He smiled. “This will pass. Go to your swim. When the vigor’s on you, think of me … here.”
Nourse and Calapine stood, ordered the carrier beams into position.
“Efficiency,” Nourse said. “We must seek more efficiency in our minions. Things must be made to run more smoothly.”
Schruille looked up at them waiting for the beams. He wanted only to be free of the wanton rambling of their voices. They missed the point, insisted on missing it.
“Efficiency?” Calapine asked. “Perhaps you’re right.”
Schruille no longer could contain the emotions at war within him. “Efficiency’s the opposite of craftsmanship,” he said. “Think on that!”
The beams came. Nourse and Calapine slid down and away without answering, leaving Schruille to close the segment. He sat alone at last within the green-blue-red winking of the control center—alone except for the glittering eyes of scanners activated along the upper circle of the globe. He counted eighty-one of them alive and staring at him and at the responses of the globe. Eighty-one of his fellows … or groups of his fellows were out there observing him and his work as he observed the Folk and their work.
The scanners imparted a vague uneasiness to Schruille. Before the Tuyere’s service, he could never remember watching the control center or its activities. Too much that was painful and unthinkable occurred here. Were the former masters of the control center curious about how the new trio dispatched its duties? Who were the watchers?
Schruille dropped his attention to the instruments. In moments like this he often felt like Chen Tzu-ang’s “Master of Dark Truth” who saw the whole world in a jade bottle. Here was the jade bottle—this globe. A flick of the power ring on the arm of his throne and he could watch a couple making love in Warsopolis, study the contents of an embryo vat in Greater London or loose hypnotic gas with taming suggestions into a warren of New Peking. The touch of a key and he could analyze the shifting motives of an entire work force in the megalopolis of Roma.
Searching within himself, Schruille could not find the impulse to move a single control.
He thought back, trying to remember how many scanners had watched the first years of the Tuyere’s service. He was sure it had never exceeded ten or twelve. But now—eighty—one.
I should’ve warned them about Svengaard, he thought. I could’ve said that we shouldn’t rely on the assumption there’s a special Providence for fools. Svengaard is a fool who disturbs me.
But Nourse and Calapine would have defended Svengaard. He knew it. They’d have insisted the man was reliable, honorable, loyal. They’d wager anything on it.
Anything? Schruille wondered. Is there something they might not wager on Svengaard’s loyalty?
Schruille could almost hear Nourse pontificating, “Our judgment of Svengaa
rd is the correct one.”
And that, Schruille thought, is what disturbs me. Svengaard worships us … as does Max. But worship is nine-tenths fear.
In time, everything becomes fear.
Schruille looked up at the watching scanners, spoke aloud: “Time-time-time …”
Let that chew at their vitals, he thought.
7
The place was a pumping station for the sewage reclamation system of Seatac Megalopolis. It lay at the eleven hundred foot level on the spur line that sent by-product irrigation water into Grand Coulee system. A four-story box of sampling pipes, computer consoles and access cat-walks aglow with force-buoyed lights, it throbbed to the pulse of the giant turbines it controlled.
The Durants had come down through the personnel tubes during the evening rush hour, moving in easy random stages that insured they weren’t followed and that they carried no tracer devices. Five inspection tubes had passed them as clean.
Still, they were careful to read the faces and actions of the people who jostled past. Most of the people were dull pages, hurried, intent on their own business. Occasionally, they exchanged a mutual reading-glance with another courier, or identified sub-officials with the fear goading them on Optiman errands.
No one noticed a couple in workman brown, their hands clasped, who emerged onto Catwalk Nine of the pumping station.
The Durants paused there to survey their surroundings. They were tired, elated and more than a little awed at having been summoned into the control core of the Parents Underground. The smell of hydrocarbons filled the air around them. Lizbeth sniffed.
Her silent conversation through their clasped hands carried overtones of tension. Harvey worked to reassure her.
“It’s probably our Glisson we’re to see,” he said.
“There could be other Cyborgs with the same name,” she said.
“Not likely.”
He urged her out onto the catwalk, past a hover light. They took a left branching past two workmen reading Pitot gauges, their faces in odd shadows created by the lights from below.
Lizbeth felt the lonely exposure of their position, signaled, “How can we be sure they aren’t watching us here?”
“This must be one of our places,” he said. “You know.”
“How can it be?”
“Route the scanners through editing computers,” he said. “The Opts see only what we want them to see then.”
“It’s dangerous to feel sure of such things,” she said. Then, “Why have they summoned us?”
“We’ll know in a few minutes,” he said.
The walk led through a dust-excluding lock port into a tool bunker, gray walls punctured by outlets for transmission tubes, the inevitable computer controls blinking, ticking, chuckling, whirring. The place smelled of a sweet oil.
As the port clanged shut behind the Durants, a figure came from their left and sat on a padded bench across from them.
The Durants stared silently, recognizing and repelled by the recognition. The figure’s outline suggested neither man nor woman. It looked planted there in the seat, and as they watched, it pulled thin cables from pockets in its gray coveralls, plugged the cables into the computer wall.
Harvey brought his attention up to the square, deeply seamed face and the light gray eyes with their stare of blank directness, that coldly measured observation which was a trademark of the Cyborg.
“Glisson,” Harvey said, “you summoned us?”
“I summoned you,” the Cyborg said. “It has been many years, Durant. Do you still fear us? I see that you do. You are late.”
“We’re unfamiliar with this area,” Harvey said.
“We came carefully,” Lizbeth said.
“Then I taught you well,” Glisson said. “You were reasonably good pupils.”
Through their clasped hands, Lizbeth signaled “They’re so hard to read, but something’s wrong.” She averted her eyes from the Cyborg, chilled by the weighted stare. No matter how she tried to think of them as flesh and blood, her mind could never evade the knowledge that such bodies contained miniaturized computers linked directly to the brain, that the arms were not arms but prosthetic tools and weapons. And the voice—always such a clipped-off unemotional quality.
“You should not fear us, madam,” Glisson said. “Unless you are not Lizbeth Durant.”
Harvey failed to repress the snap of anger, said, “Don’t talk to her that way! You don’t own us.”
“What is the first lesson I taught you after you were recruited?” Glisson asked.
Harvey brought himself under control, forced a rueful smile onto his mouth. “To hold our tempers,” he said. Lizbeth’s hand continued to tremble in his.
“That lesson you did not learn well,” Glisson said. “I overlook your fallibility.”
Through their hands, Lizbeth signaled, “It was prepared for violence against us.”
Harvey acknowledged.
“First,” Glisson said, “you will report on the genetic operation.” There was a pause while the Cyborg changed its jacked connections to the computer wall. “Do not be distracted by my work. I distribute tools—thus”—it indicated the bunker—“this space which appears on their screens as a space filled with tools, will never be investigated.”
A bench slid from the wall to the Durants’ right. “If you are fatigued, sit,” Glisson said. The Cyborg indicated its cable linkage to the wall computer. “I sit only that I may carry on the work of this space while we speak.” The Cyborg smiled, a stiff rictus to signify that the Durants must realize such as Glisson did not feel fatigue.
Harvey urged Lizbeth to the bench. She sat as he signaled, “Caution. Glisson’s maneuvering us. Something’s being hidden.”
Glisson turned slightly to face them, said, “A verbal, factual, complete report. Leave out nothing, no matter how trivial it may seem to you. I have limitless capacity for data.”
They began recounting what they had observed of the genetic operation, taking up from each other on cue without a break as good couriers were taught to do. Harvey experienced the odd feeling during the recital that he and Lizbeth became part of the Cyborg’s mechanism. Questions came so mechanically from Glisson’s lips. Their answers felt so clinical. He had to keep reminding himself, This is our son we discuss.
Presently, Glisson said, “There seems no doubt we’ve another viable immune to the gas. Your evidence virtually completes the picture. We have other data, you know.”
“I didn’t know the surgeon was one of us,” Lizbeth said.
There was a pause while Glisson’s eyes went even blanker than usual. The Durants felt they could almost see the esoteric formulae flitting through Glisson’s thinking-banks. It was said the Cyborgs composed most of their thoughts only in higher math, translating to common language as it suited them.
“The surgeon was not one of us,” Glisson said. “But he soon will be.”
What strategic formula produced those words, Harvey wondered. “What about the computer tape on the operation?” he asked.
“It’s destroyed,” Glisson said. “Even now, your embryo is being removed to a safe place. You will join him soon.” A mechanical chuckle escaped the Cyborg’s lips.
Lizbeth shivered. Harvey felt the tension of her through their hands. He said, “Is our son safe?”
“Safe,” Glisson said. “Our plans insure that safety.”
“How?” Lizbeth asked.
“You will understand soon,” Glisson said. “An ancient and reliable way of safe concealment. Be assured: viables are valuable weapons. We do not risk our valuable weapons.”
Lizbeth signaled, “The cut—ask now.”
Harvey wet his lips with his tongue, said, “There are … when a Central surgeon’s called in, usually it means the embryo could be cut to Optiman. Did they … is our son …”
Glisson’s nostrils flared. The face took on a look of hauteur that said such ignorance insulted a Cyborg. The clipped voice said, “We would require a co
mplete tape record, including the enzymic data even to guess. The tape is gone. Only the surgeon knows the result of the operation for certain. We have yet to question him.”
Lizbeth said: “Svengaard or the computer nurse might’ve said something that—”
“Svengaard is a dolt,” Glisson said. “The computer nurse is dead.”
“They killed her?” Lizbeth whispered.
“How she died isn’t important,” Glisson said. “She served her purpose.”
With his hand, Harvey signaled, “The Cyborgs had something to do with her death!”
“I saw,” she answered.
Harvey said, “Are you … will we be allowed to talk to Potter?”
“Potter will be offered full Cyborg status,” Glisson said. “Talking will be his decision … afterward.”
“We want to know about our son!” Lizbeth flared.
Harvey signaled frantically, “Apologize!”
“Madam,” Glisson said, “let me remind you the so-called Optiman cut is not a state to which we aspire. Remember your vows.”
She squeezed Harvey’s hand to silence his signals, said, “I’m sorry. It was such a shock to learn … the possibility …”
“Your emotional excesses are taken into account as a mitigating circumstance,” Glisson said. “It is well, therefore, that I warn you of a thing to happen. You will hear things about your son which you must not let excite you.”
“What things?” Lizbeth whispered.
“An outside force of unknown origin sometimes interferes with the anticipated course of a genetic operation,” Glisson said. “There is reason to believe this happened with your son.”
“What do you mean?” Harvey asked.
“Mean!” Glisson sneered. “You ask questions to which there are no answers.”
“What does this … thing do?” Lizbeth supplied.
Glisson looked at her. “It behaves somewhat in the fashion of a charged particle, penetrates the genetic core and alters the structure. If this has happened to your son, you may consider it beneficial because it apparently prevents the Optiman cut.”
The Durants digested this.
Presently, Harvey said, “Do you require more of us? May we go now?”
The Eyes of Heisenberg Page 7
