“Speak up and say what you will,” Calapine commanded. “I, Calapine, order it. Show honor now and perhaps we will be lenient.”
Harvey stared, mute. She seemed unaware of the growing uproar all around.
“Durant,” Glisson said, “you must remember there are subterranean things called instincts which direct destiny with the inexorable flow of a river. This is change. See it around us. Change is the only constant.”
“But she’s dying,” Harvey said.
Calapine couldn’t make sense of his words, but she found herself touched by the tone of concern for her in his voice. She consulted her bracelet linkage with the globe. Concern! He was worried about her, about Calapine, not about himself or his futile mate!
She turned into an oddly enfolding darkness, collapsed full length on the floor with her arms outstretched toward the benches.
A mirthless chuckle escaped Glisson’s lips.
“We have to do something for them,” Harvey said. “They have to understand what they’re doing to themselves!”
Schruille stirred suddenly, looked up at the opposite wall, saw dark patches where scanners had been deactivated, abandoned by the Optimen who couldn’t jam into the hall. He felt an abrupt alarm at the eddies of movement in the crowd all around. Some of the people were leaving—swaying, drifting, running, laughing, giggling … .
But we came to question the prisoners, Schruille thought.
The hysteria in the hall slowly impressed itself on Schruille’s senses. He looked at Nourse.
Nourse sat with eyes closed, mumbling to himself. “Boiling oil,” Nourse said. “But that’s too sudden. We need something more subtle, more enduring.”
Schruille leaned forward. “I have a question for the man Harvey Durant.”
“What is it?” Nourse asked. He opened his eyes, pushed forward, subsided.
“What did he hope to gain by his actions?” Schruille asked.
“Very good,” Nourse said. “Answer the question, Harvey Durant.”
Nourse touched his own bracelet. The purple beam of light inched closer to the prisoners.
“I didn’t want you to die,” Harvey said. “Not this.”
“Answer the question!” Schruille blared.
Harvey swallowed. “I wanted to—”
“We wanted to have a family,” Lizbeth said. She spoke clearly, reasonably. “That’s all. We wanted to be a family.” Tears started in her eyes and she wondered then what her child would have been like. Certainly, none of them were going to survive this madness.
“What is this?” Schruille asked. “What is this family nonsense?”
“Where did you get the substitute embryo?” Nourse asked. “Answer and we may be lenient.” Again the burning light moved toward the prisoners.
“We have self-viables immune to the contraceptive gas,” Glisson said. “Many of them.”
“You see?” Schruille said. “I told you so.”
“Where are these self-viables?” Nourse asked. He felt his right hand trembling, looked at it wonderingly.
“Right under your noses,” Glisson said. “Scattered through the population. And don’t ask me to identify them. I don’t know them all. No one does.”
“None will escape us,” Schruille said.
“None!” Nourse echoed.
“If we must,” Schruille said, “we’ll sterilize all but Central and start over.”
“With what will you start over?” Glisson asked.
“What?” Schruille screamed the word at the Cyborg.
“Where will you find the genetic pool from which to start over?” Glisson asked. “You are sterile—and terminating.”
“We need but one cell to duplicate the original,” Schruille said, his voice sneering.
“They why haven’t you duplicated yourselves?” Glisson asked.
“You dare question us?” Nourse demanded.
“I will answer for you then,” Glisson said. “You’ve not chosen duplication because the doppleganger is unstable. The trend of the duplicates is downward—extinction.”
Calapine heard scattered words—“Sterile … terminating … unstable … extinction …” They were hideous words that crept down into the depths where she lay watching a string of fat sausages parade in glowing order before her awareness. They were like seeds with a lambent radiance moving against a background of oiled black velvet. Sausages. Seeds. She saw them then not precisely as seeds, but as encapsulated life—walled in, shielded, bridging a period unfavorable to life. It made the idea of seeds less repellent to her. They were life … always life.
“We don’t need the genetic pool,” Schruille said.
Calapine heard his voice clearly, felt she could read his thoughts. Words out of one of the glowing sausages forced themselves upon her: We have our millions in Central. We are enough by ourselves. Feeble, short-lived Folk are a disgusting reminder of our past. They are pets and we no longer need pets.
“I’ve decided what we can do to these criminals,” Nourse said. He spoke loudly to force his voice over the growing hubbub in the hall. “We will apply nerve excitation a micron at a time. The pain will be exquisite and can be drawn out for centuries.”
“But you said you didn’t want to cause pain,” Schruille shouted.
“Didn’t I?” Nourse’s voice sounded worried.
I don’t feel well, Calapine thought. I need a long session in the pharmacy. Pharmacy. The word was a switch that turned on her consciousness. She felt her body stretched out on the floor, pain and wetness at her nose where it had struck the floor in her fall.
“Your suggestion contains some merit, however,” Schuiller said. “We could restore the nerves behind our ministrations and carry on the punishment indefinitely. Exquisite pain forever!”
“A hell,” Nourse said. “Appropriate.”
“They’re insane enough to do it,” Svengaard rasped.
“How can we stop them?”
“Glisson!” Lizbeth said. “Do something!”
But the Cyborg remained silent.
“This is something you didn’t anticipate, isn’t it, Glisson?” Svengaard said.
Still, the Cyborg held to silence.
“Answer me!” Svengaard grated.
“They were just supposed to die,” Glisson said, voice dispassionate.
“But now they could sterilize all the earth except Central and go on in their madness by themselves,” Svengaard said. “And we could be tortured forever!”
“Not forever,” Glisson said. “They’re dying.”
A cheer went up from the Optimen at the rear of the hall. None of the prisoners could turn to see what had aroused the sound, but it added a new dimension to the sense of urgency around them.
Calapine lifted herself from the floor. Her nose and mouth throbbed with pain. She turned toward the tumbril, saw a commotion among the Optimen beyond it. They were leaping on benches to watch some excited activity hidden in their midst. A naked body lifted suddenly above the throng, turned over and went down again with a sodden thump. Again, a cheer shook the hall.
What’re they doing? Calapine wondered. They’re hurting each other—themselves.
She wiped a hand across her nose and mouth, looked at the hand. Blood. She could smell it now, a tantalizing smell. Her own blood. It fascinated her. She crossed to the prisoners, showed the hand to Harvey Durant.
“Blood,” she said. She touched her nose. Pain! “It hurts,” she said. “Why does it hurt, Harvey Durant?” She stared into his eyes. Such sympathy in his eyes. He was human. He cared.
Harvey looked at her, their eyes almost level because of the tumbril’s position above the floor. He felt a profound compassion for her suddenly. She was Lizbeth; she was Calapine; she was all women. He saw the concentrated intensity of her attention, the here-now awareness which excluded everything except her need for his words.
“It hurts me, too, Calapine,” he said, “but your death would hurt me more.”
For an instant,
Calapine thought the hall had grown still around her. She realized then that noises of the throng continued unabated. She could hear Nourse chanting, “Good! Good!” and Schruille saying, “Excellent! Excellent!” She realized then that she had been the only one to hear Durant’s hideous words. It was blasphemy. She’d lived thousands of years suppressing the very concept of personal death. It could not be said or conceived in the mind. But she had heard the words. She wanted to turn away, to believe those words had never happened. But something of the attention she had focused on Harvey Durant held her chained to his meaning. Only minutes ago, she had been where the seed of life spanned the eons. She had felt the wild presence of forces that could move within the mitochrondrial structures of the cells.
“Please,” Lizbeth whispered. “Free us. You’re a woman. You must have some compassion. What have we done to harm you? Is it wrong to want love and life? We didn’t want to harm you.”
Calapine gave no sign that she heard. There were only Harvey’s words playing over and over in her mind, “Your death … your death … your death … your death …”
Odd flickerings of heat and chill surged through her body. She heard another cheer from the crowd in the far benches. She felt her own sickness and growing awareness of the cul-de-sac in which she had been trapped. Anger suffused her. She bent to the tumbril’s controls, punched a button beneath Glisson.
The carapaces of the shell which held the Cyborg began closing. Glisson’s eyes opened wide. A rasping moan escaped him. Calapine giggled, punched another button on the controls. The shells snapped to their former position. Glisson gasped.
She turned to the controls beneath Harvey, poised a finger over the buttons. “Explain your disgusting breach of manners!”
Harvey remained frozen in silence. She was going to crush him!
Svengaard began to laugh. He knew his own position, the first-class second-rater. Why had he been chosen for this moment—to see Glisson and Boumour without words, Nourse and Schruille babbling on their bench, the Optimen in little knots and eddies of mad violence, Calapine ready to kill her prisoners and doubtless forget it ten seconds later. His laughter went out of control.
“Stop that laughing!” Calapine screamed.
Svengaard trembled with hysteria. He gasped for breath. The shock of her voice helped him gain a measure of control, but it still was immensely ludicrous.
“Fool!” Calapine said. “Explain yourself.”
Svengaard stared at her. He could feel only pity now. He remembered the sea from the medical resort at Lapush and he thought he saw now why the Optimen had chosen this place so far from any ocean. Instinct. The sea produced waves, surf—a constant reminder that they had set themselves against eternity’s waves. They could not face that.
“Answer me,” Calapine said. Her hand hovered above his shell’s controls.
Svengaard could only stare at her and at the Optimen in their madness beyond her. They stood exposed before him as though their bodies had been opened to spill twisting entrails on the floor.
They have souls with only one scar, Svengaard thought.
It was carved on them day by day, century by century, eon by eon—the increment of panic that their blessed foreverness might be illusion, that it might after all have an ending. He had never before suspected the price the Optimen paid for infinity. The more of it they possessed, the greater its value. The greater the value, the greater the fear of losing it. The pressure went up and up … forever.
But there had to be a breaking point. The Cyborgs had seen this, and in their emotionless manner had missed the real consequences.
The Optimen had themselves hemmed in with euphemisms. They had pharmacists, not doctors, because doctors meant sickness and injury, and that equaled the unthinkable. They had only their pharmacy and its countless outlets never more than a few steps from any Optiman. They never left Central and its elaborate safeguards. They existed as perpetual adolescents in their nursery prison.
“So you won’t speak,” Calapine said.
“Wait,” Svengaard said as her hand moved toward the buttons beneath him. “When you’ve killed all the viables and only you remain, when you see yourselves dying one by one, what then?”
“How dare you?” she said. “You think to question an Optiman whose experience of life makes yours no more than that!” She snapped her fingers.
He looked at her bruised nose, the blood.
“Optiman,” Svengaard said. “A Sterrie whose constitution will accept the enzyme adjustment for infinite life … until destruction comes from within. I think you want to die.”
Calapine drew herself up, glared at him. As she did, she became aware of a sudden odd silence in the hall. She swept a glance around her, saw intent watchfulness in every eye focused upon her. Realization came slowly. They see the blood on my face.
“You had infinite life,” Svengaard said. “Does that make you necessarily more brilliant, more intelligent? No. You merely lived longer, had more time for experience and education. Very likely, most of you are educated beyond your intelligence, else you’d have seen long ago that this moment was inevitable—the delicate balance destroyed, all of you dying.”
Calapine took a step backward. His words were like painful knives burning into her nerves.
“Look at you!” Svengaard said. “All of you sick. What does your precious pharmacy do? I know without being told: It prescribes wider and wider variant prescriptions, more frequent dosages. It’s trying to check the oscillations because that’s how it’s programmed. It’ll go on trying as long as you permit it, but it won’t save you.”
Someone screamed behind her, “Silence him!”
The cry was taken up around the hall, a deafening chant, foot stamping, hands pounding, “Si-lence him! Si-lence him! Si-lence him!”
Calapine pressed her hands to her ears. She could still feel the chant through her skin. And now she saw Optimen start down off the benches toward the prisoners. She knew bloody violence was only a heartbeat away.
They stopped.
She couldn’t understand why, and dropped her hands away from her ears. Screams rained down on her. The names of half-forgotten dieties were invoked. Eyes stared at something on the floor at the head of the hall.
Calapine whirled, saw Nourse writhing there, foamy spittle around his mouth. His skin was a mottled reddish purple and yellow. Clawed hands reached out, scraped the floor.
“Do something!” Svengaard shouted. “He’s dying!” Even as he shouted, he felt the strangeness of his words. Do something!? His medical training surfaced and spoke no matter what happened.
Calapine backed away, put out her hands in a warding gesture as old as witchcraft. Schruille leaped up, stood on the bench where he’d been sitting. His mouth moved soundlessly.
“Calapine,” Svengaard said, “if you won’t help him, release me so I can do it.”
She leaped to obey, filled with gratitude that she could give this hideous responsibility to another.
The restraining shells fell away at her touch. Svengaard leaped down, almost fell. His legs and arms tingled from the long confinement. He limped toward Nourse, his eyes and mind working as he moved. Mottled yellow in the skin—most probably an immune reaction to pantothenic acid and a failure of adrenalin suppression.
The red triangle of a pharmacy outlet glowed on the wall at his left above the benches. Svengaard stooped, picked up Nourse’s writhing form, began climbing toward the symbol. The man was a sudden death weight in his arms, no movement except a shallow lifting of the breast.
Optimen fell back from him as though he carried plague. Abruptly, someone above him shouted, “Let me out!”
The mob turned away. Feet pounded on the plasmeld. They jammed up at the exits, clawed and climbed over one another. There were screams, curses, hoarse shouts. It was like a cattle pen with a predator loose in the midst of the animals.
Part of Svengaard’s awareness registered on a woman at his right. He passed her. She lay stret
ched across two banks of seats, her back at an odd angle, mouth gaping, eyes staring, blood on her arms and neck. There was no sign of breath. He climbed past a man who dragged himself up the tiered benches, one leg useless, his eyes intent on an exit sign and a doorway which appeared to be filled with writhing shapes.
Svengaard’s arms ached from his load. He stumbled, almost fell up the last two steps as he eased Nourse to the floor beside the pharmacy outlet.
There were voices down behind him now—Durant and Boumour shouting to be released.
Later, Svengaard thought. He put his hand to the door control on the pharmacy outlet. The doors refused to open. Of course, he thought. I’m not an Optiman. He lifted Nourse, put one of the Optiman’s hands to the control. The doors slid aside. Behind them lay what appeared to be the standard presentation of a priority rack—pyrimidines, aneurin …
Aneurin and inositol, he thought. Got to counteract the immune reaction.
A familiar flow-analysis board occupied the right side with a gap for insertion of an arm and the usual vampire needles protruding from their gauges. Svengaard tripped the keys on the master flow gauge, opened the panel. He traced back the aneurin and inositol feeders, immobilized the others, thrust Nourse’s arm beneath the needles. They found veins, dipped into flesh. Gauges kicked over.
Svengaard pinched off the return line to stop feedback. Again, the gauges kicked over.
Gently, Svengaard disengaged Nourse’s arm from the needles, stretched him on the floor. His face was now a uniform pale white, but his breathing had deepened. His eyelids flickered. His flesh felt cold, clammy.
Shock, Svengaard thought. He removed his own jacket, put it around Svengaard, began massaging the arms to restore circulation.
Calapine came into view on his right, sat down at Nourse’s head. Her hands were clasped tightly together, knuckles white. There was an odd clarity in her face, the eyes with a look of staring into distances. She felt she had come a much farther distance than up from the floor of the hall, drawn by memories that would not be denied. She knew she had gone through madness into an oddly detached sanity.
The Eyes of Heisenberg Page 16
