"Can you control other snakes?"
"Not so"s you"d notice. Lady Venom"s the only one I ever met who isn"t shy."
"You know, of course, that she"s presumably a mutant?"
The Kid shrugged. "I heard people talking about mutants," he admitted. "Maybe she is and maybe she isn"t. Maybe she"s the next step up the evolutionary ladder for serpentkind. Maybe, when we"re gone, it"ll be the snakes instead of the rats and the c.o.c.kroaches who inherit the earth." The Kid grinned, to show that it was a joke, but Yokoi didn"t even crack the kind of polite smile he gave out on a regular basis.
"Do you really think that the human empire is coming to an end?" asked the scientist softly. "Did you choose your dream?"
"Don"t you think we"re doomed?" countered the Kid amiably. "Homer Hegarty doesa"and so does your boss, Tanagawa, if I can take him at his word. Everybody knows that the deserts are spreading, and that the sea level"s rising. The rivers are already dead, and they say the seas are dying too. Ecocatastrophe, isn"t that what they call it?"
"The term is freely used," Yokoi conceded, in his customary over-scrupulous fashion, "but its meaning is rather vague. I doubt, though, that Director Tanagawa"s anxieties have much to do with an impending ecocatastrophe. He is much more concerned about the war."
"Which war?"
"The war, Zero-san. The war between the corporationsa"GenTech"s war."
"I thought that was just hypea"just a way of talking about the way the corps compete for the workingman"s dollar."
"So it should be," said Yokoi soberly. "But Tanagawa-san fears that GenTech may have lost sight of its true objectives."
"What objectives does a corp have, apart from making money?" asked he Kid, cynically.
"Dollars are only symbols of true wealth," said the scientist. "True wealth is property: land, materials, machinery. True wealth is power. For most of human history, it would have made no sense to speak of people owning even the tracts of land on which they lived, but as soon as it became sensible to talk in those terms there was set in train a process whose inevitable end would be the ownership of the entire earth. That process has nearly reached its end, Zero-san. But the end is supposed to be ownership and control, not destruction. Compet.i.tion between corporations should be a matter of products, not bullets. The corporation which obliterates its markets obliterates itself."
"And you think GenTech"s directors don"t know that?" The Kid was frankly incredulous.
Yokoi spread his hands, as if to say that the incredibility of it was not his fault. "GenTech"s masters, whoever they may bea"and the fact that even our own Directors do not know is itself ominousa"seem to be in danger of losing sight of it. GenTech"s business is being conducted in an increasingly aggressive manner, and the manner of its threats and postures is giving us concern. In particular, we are anxious about the a.r.s.enal of biotechnological weapons which it appear to be building."
"Is that what this affair with the disc is all about? You think the disc has information relating to plague warfare? And you"re worried that if you can"t defend yourselves against what GenTech have, they might actually set out to wipe you outa"literally?"
Yokoi nodded. "Those are some of our Tanagawa-san"s anxieties," he conceded.
"Some?" The Kid fought an impulse to laugh. "That isn"t enough?"
"It is only the beginning of our real fears," said Yokoi regretfully. "Only the beginning."
4.
You"re sitting in a chair in a windowless office, looking into the intimidating eyes of a blond man with ice-blue eyes. The expression on his face is difficult to read, but it might be amused contempt.
"I"m trying to make human beings better than nature makes them," the blond man is saying. "I"m trying to get one step ahead of the clumsy process of mutation and natural selection. I"m trying to create the next stage in our evolutiona"h.o.m.o superior, as the old science fiction writers used to call it. Do you read science fiction, Carl?"
"Sure," you say.
"Then maybe you can understand what I"m trying to do. I"m trying to make us bettera"better able to repair ourselvesamore resistant to diseaseaimmortal."
"But it doesn"t always work, does it, Doc?" you say. "It didn"t work on Bro, did it? It made him into a freaka"a poisonous freak."
(It didn"t work on Snake Eyes either. It just made her into a freaka"and she didn"t even gel to be poison, did she?) For a moment or two Zarathustra"s face blurs, and superimposed upon it you see another: darker, coa.r.s.er, wild-eyed. The image is fleeting, and is soon gone. Zarathustra raises his thick blond eyebrows, as if astonished to have been displaced from centre-stage, if only for a moment.
"There are casualties," says Zarathustra evenly. "But the casualties of genetic engineering research can be counted in their hundreds, Carl. The casualties of trial by mutation have to be counted in billions. How many creatures died, do you think, while natural selection was shaping mankind out of the clay of common apes? People die, Carl, and people suffera"but that was the situation I inherited, and I don"t have to take responsibility for it. I"m trying to ameliorate that suffering, and in the end I hope to eliminate the necessity of death itself; in the meantime, I make errors. I add a small measure to the quota of suffering which falls upon the victims of my errorsa"but anything I inflict on anyone here is trivial compared to what goes on outside these walls.
"You know what the world is like, Carla"you"ve ridden the convoys long enough to know all the kinds of human vermin which swarm about the roads and the towns. Was what I did to Mary anything like as bad as what Satan"s Stormtroopers did to her before you brought her back? And what I did, I did because I was trying to make the world bettera"what they did, they did because they"re trying to tear the world apart with their vacuous rage. Do you think your brother is in h.e.l.l, Carl? Do you honestly think that he has a worse life now than he would have had if he"d still have been on the road? He was a disaster looking for somewhere to happen, and you know ita"and you know, too, that if things had been different you"d have been in that disaster with him, at ground zero. Don"t come crying to me about casualties, Carla"but for me, you"d be one."
You hear yourself beginning another question (which is odd, in a way, because you don"t remember forming any intention to speak, and you haven"t the slightest idea what it is that you"re going to say).
As it turns out, what you say is: "Where do the mutants fit in, Dr Zarathustra? Why have you interrupted your programmes in order to study the mutants?"
The blond man opens his mouth to reply, but he too seems confused. No words come out immediately, and when they finally do, they"re peculiarly slurred.
"That"s none of your business, Carl," he says.
"I"ve a right to know," your voice insistsa"except that it doesn"t seem to be your voice any more. Does it even sound the same? Nor does Dr Zarathustra seem to be Dr Zarathustra any morea"again that other face is briefly superimposed, but then there"s a more general blurring, as though the whole room is slipping out of focus. It lasts longer than last time, but eventually the image firms up again.
"If I knew what I thought," says the bioscientist, "I"d tell you. But I don"t.
"There"s been some talk about the laws of nature breaking down," you saya"and once again your voice sounds normal, as though they really are your words. "You think there"s something new going ona"something more sinister than chemical and radioactive wastes?"
"That would make a lot of people feel better," says Zarathustra wearily. "If what"s happening to the world is just a symptom of some ongoing catastrophe, we don"t have to take the blame for it. But I don"t know what is meanta"or could be meanta"by the laws of nature breaking down. If it only means that some of the things we thought we knew for sure aren"t true after all, that"s okaya"that I can take aboard. But if you mean all this Millenarian stuff about evil"s empire bidding to take over the world before the messiah comes again, forget ita"you know how I feel about that kind of stuff. You shouldn"t watch so much TV, Carl."
"But what about the mutants," you hear yourself saying. "What do you think they are?"
Again the blond man slips out of focus, as though a sheet of gla.s.s is somehow materializing to shield his face.
"I don"t know, Carl," he saysa"though his voice sounds funny, like a bad tape-recording. "I don"t knowaI don"ta."
The image snaps back into focus again, and you see that Zarathustra is leaning forward now, his expression far more intense.
"Carl," he says, with contrived softness "there is no such thing as a tame and loyal rattlesnakea"unless it is a very peculiar mutant. I want that snake, Carl. I need it. I want you to bring me that snake, dead or alive but preferably alive. Just get them for me, Mr Pasco: the Kid, the snake, the disca"I want them all, very badly."
(You shiver suddenly, but it"s not a physical shuddera"it"s an internal shiver, a ripple of sensationa as though someone just walked over your grave.) "Why?" The word comes from nowhere, cracking like a pistol shot. But the question goes unanswered. The image blurs again, as if it"s stubbornly trying to fade out.
(But you don"t want it to fade. You want answers.) "What"s on the disc, Doc?" says that voice, againa"the voice which ought to be yours but isn"t. "Why did the guys upstairs panic when they found out it was missing? Why did you try to keep it quiet, so that they wouldn"t ever have to know it was missing? What"s going on, Doc?"
Zarathustra"s face is oddly contorted now, and you can"t quite fathom out what"s happening to it. But the thin lips open, and the answer comes out, grotesquely inflected. (Mocking? Derisive? Sarcastic?) "You know why, Carl," says Doc Zarathustra. "You"ve worked it out all by yourself. You know why, don"t you?"
"No," you say. "Noa"I don"t know why."
"Yes you do," insists the Doc, his face twisted into an evil grin. "You know. Admit it, Carl, you know."
(Obviously, you don"t want to know. You wish that you didn"t know. Obviously, you don"t want anyone else to know that you knowa"but it"s too late now, because it"s on tape. You"ve made your own horrorshow, and now you have to star in it. You have to say it. Please, please say it!) You hear your voice again, and you struggle to catch the word that it"s trying to p.r.o.nounce..but it"s not easy, because the word isn"t a real word at all, just a syllableajust a meaningless syllablea "Bro," you say.
"Speak up," says the hideous caricature of Dr Zarathustra, grinning in an appalling manner, as though it were the face of the Devil incarnate. "What did you say?"
"Bro," you say, again. And then, mercifully, you black out.
You black it all out. You sleep; you die; you refuse to exist.
(But when all else is silenced, you can still hear the soft humming of a machine. You knowa"you knowa"that the tape is still running.
In the horrorshow, you can"t even die.) They were both waiting for the Kida"Yokoi and Tanagawa. At least that meant that there were chairs to sit on, and a table on which to rest his elbows. The Kid could see that they were interested in his response to Preston"s tape, and he felt sick as a pig that he didn"t understand it at all.
He knew, though, that they understood it. How else could they seem so smug?
"One lousy syllable?" he said, in an unreasonably bad-tempered fashion. "You go digging around in the deep recesses of the guy"s mind, and all you come up with is one lousy syllable?"
"It was enough," said Tanagawa softly. "Given what we already know, it was enough."
"Do I get an explanation?" asked the Kid.
Tanagawa just smileda"but Dr Yokoi stepped into the breach. "Mr Preston has a younger brother," he said. "Bro is short for brothera"it"s what Preston always called him. The younger brother was unfortunately and accidentally involved in one of Dr Zarathustra"s experiments, which went wronga"it was that experiment which the early part of the remembered dialogue refers to. Zarathustra transformed a girl"s red blood cells, hoping to increase their resistance to disease, but there was an unforeseen side-effect. She becameapoisonous. Her bodily secretions are fatal to anyone who come into contact with them, unless they too have similarly-transformed blood cells. Mr Preston"s brother was subsequently infected with the same condition."
The Kid thought about Snake-Eyes, who had always joked about becoming poisonous, but had never succeeded.
"Plague warfare," he said bleakly. "GenTech can manufacture an army of poisonous soldiers, capable of wiping out everyone who isn"t like them. That"s what"s on Zarathustra"s disc. That"s why everyone"s so desperate to have it. Anyone who has a copy of the disc has the power to destroy the whole freak in" world."
"That information is on the disc," agreed Tanagawa serenely. "Among many other things, some of which might be equally important."
"And now the mafia have it tooa"and Mitsu-Makema. You can all wipe out the outsiders. You can all destroy the world."
"No one wants to," said Tanagawa. "No onea"except, perhaps, the Temple."
"The Temple? What the freakin" h.e.l.l is the Temple?"
"We are not entirely sure," said Tanagawa. "We believe that it may be a Millenarian cult; we also believe that it may be very influential within the higher echelons of GenTech. There is a possibility that the Temple may even control GenTech. If that is true, then the Temple may be the first Millenarian cult in history ever to acquire the power to bring about the end of the world. It is a paradox, we knowa"Millenarianism is supposed to be an expression of powerlessnessaa producer of doomed ghost dancers; it is not supposed to involve powerful men in powerful corporations. But we live in a paradoxical world, Mr Zero."
The Kid thought back to the tape of Preston"s command performance dream. "Even Zarathustra doesn"t want it," he said. "He really does mean what he says about trying to make things better. He was trying to keep the secreta"even from his own bossesabecause he"s afraid, too."
"It was not the real Dr Zarathustra on the tape," Yokoi reminded him. "It was Carl Preston"s image of him. But it may well be accurate. You may have done the world a service, Zero-san. Once we have the disc in our possession, the particular weapon in question will be much reduced in value. Its worth is halved because we have it too, and halved again because we have the opportunity to devise a defencea"a cure for the poisoning."
"This weapon," said the Kid, who was smart enough to see all the implications of the phrase. There would be other weapons. If Tanagawa"s paranoid anxiety about secret societies running GenTech had any real basis, this would be a temporary victory.
Then he remembered a couple of other things. He remembered that whoever had been feeding the questions into Preston"s dream hadn"t only asked about why GenTech"s bosses were so annoyed about the leaka"he had also asked about the mutants. He had asked about the mutants first. And the Kid remembered that Dr Yokoi had said that fears about the possibility of plague war were only the beginning of Mitsu-Makema"s anxieties.
The Kid was getting used to making convoluted deductions. "You think that GenTech might be making the mutants themselves, don"t you?" he said, jumping boldly to the conclusion. "You think it might be part of some plan; but if it is, Preston sure as h.e.l.l knows nothing about it."
"The possibility that the mutants are being deliberately created was not one we felt able to discount," Tanagawa replied, obviously choosing his words very carefully.
"Why would anyone do that?" asked the Kid exasperatedly "You heard what Dr Zarathustra said about his own objectives, Zero-san," Yokoi put in. "His objective is to control the genes which determine what we area"to conquer change itself. He has produced monsters."
It wasn"t really an answer, but the Kid stirred uneasily in his seat as he thought of something else. "You aren"t going to hurt Lady Venom, are you?" he said, sharply.
"No, Zero-san," said Yokoi rea.s.suringly. "We are not."
"Where is she? You woke up Pasco and Preston because it wasn"t safe for them to stay asleep any longera"how come it"s safe for the Lady?"
"It is safe," said Yokoi. "Reptiles are more resilient than human beings in many respects. They are metabolically-capable of hibernation or estivation for months on end. There is, if you will permit it, one more experiment with the sensurround booths which we would like to try."
"What experiment?"
"We would like you to undertake another interactive sittinga"and we would like to complicate the interaction by running two computers in parallel. One of them will be linked to your brain, the other to Lady Venom"s."
Kid Zero looked at Tanagawa briefly, then turned back to face Dr Yokoi again. "Why?" he asked.
"We would like to observe your processes of communication, if such a thing is possible. There is no reason to think that there is any risk involveda"you have monitored the tapes which we made of Ray Pasco and Carl Preston, and you have some idea of the capabilities and limitations of the machine."
The Kid furrowed his brow, but he knew that he would have to go along with it. He had become curious himself, and it was an interesting ideaa"but he knew that it didn"t interest his hosts for the same reasons that it interested him. "What do you think the mutants are, Dr Yokoi?" he asked. "Why do you think they"re so important?"
Yokoi and Tanagawa exchanged a glance. Then Yokoi said: "I honestly do not know, Zero-san. It is not my field, and I have been asked to investigate the matter now only because of the fortunate coincidence of your being brought here, and because there is a slim possibility that my machines could be useful."
The glance had told the Kid what he needed to know, and he switched his gaze to Tanagawa without hesitation. "What do you think, Mr Tanagawa? You seem to be the guesser-in-chief around here?"
Tanagawa smiled. "A man must have imagination, Mr Zero, or he is nothing. I, too, could say honestly that I do not know, but it would not be entirely fair to do so. I am not a scientist, whose work is to establish the truth of matters; I am a director of a multinational corporation, whose duty it is to deal in anxiety on the one hand, and hope on the other. I hope that the mutants are exactly what they seem, Mr Zero; but I am anxious that they may be something sinistera"something dangerous."
"How sinister? How dangerous?"
"If you care to use your own imagination, Mr Zero," said Tanagawa evenly, "you might make up fantasies of your own. But I will offer you one, for your patient consideration.
"The universe may be full of life, Mr Zero; the earth may only be one arena of evolution among many. We have come to a threshold in our own affairs which maya"if we can overcome our present difficultiesa"allow us to cross the wilderness of s.p.a.ce which isolates our world, and carry earthly life to other planets. But we have recently crossed another technological threshold, which may have given advance warning of this impending expansion to other interested parties. The electromagnetic leakage of our radio broadcasts has been travelling outwards in all directions for some seventy years nowa"which means that the presence on earth of a technologically-sophisticated race might be known to every other technologically-sophisticated species within seventy light-years.
"During those same seventy years our imaginative writers have produced countless lurid accounts of the invasion of our world by alien lifea"but they have almost always a.s.sumed that the invaders would be beings like ourselves, who have crossed s.p.a.ce in mighty armadas of starships. Suppose, Mr Zero, that the invasion did not come like thata"suppose the would-be conquerors and colonists of earth did not send armies bearing guns and bombs, but only tiny packages of DNA, whose task is to work from withina"to invade the bodies of all living creatures on earth, not simply as destroyers but as changers, whose task is to transform our biosphere into an alien Eden, ready and waiting for a new Adam and Eve. Would that not be the method of a truly sophisticated race of invaders, Mr Zero? And would not the first evidence of such an invasion be the emergence of a new and multifarious race of mutants?"
The Kid was stunned. He knew that a tape had been made of the interactive hallucination which he had produced before being woken up after his journey from America, but he also knew from having viewed Pasco"s and Preston"s tapes that such a transcription was very limited. As Yokoi had pointed out, the visuals could be taped, but not the interpretations. His reflections on the substance of his own dream were as private as his reflections on the provocative content of Pasco"s. There was no way that Tanagawa could know about his emotional responses to the images of a reborn earth which he had dreamed up in collaboration with Yokoi"s computers, and no way he could know about the trains of thought which Pasco"s nightmare had triggered off. How come, therefore, this bizarre hypothesis of Tanagawa"s could mesh so easily with his own fantasies?
I have a remarkably vivid imagination, thought the Kid, remembering what Yokoi had said to him before, considering my limited education. The lousy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds think I"m one too! They think I"m the freaking mutant, not Lady Venom. They think I"m carrying some alien diseasea"that"s why I"m worth two hundred thousand a day to them.
He didn"t say a word of that out loud, though. After all, he might be wronga"and he certainly didn"t want to put the idea into their heads if it wasn"t already there.
"You believe the earth is being invaded by alien life-forms?" he said, trying as hard as he could to sound sarcastic and incredulous.
Tanagawa spread his hands wide to disclaim any such belief. "It is a fantasy," he insisted, very politely. "Mere hypothesis, and nothing more. A nightmare, if you willa"a mere horrorshow. But until we know the truth, how can we conquer our nightmares, and overcome our horrors?"
The Kid remembered something else that Tanagawa had said earlier, about how worrying it was that the directors of Mitsu-Makema didn"t know who their opposite numbers in GenTech actually were. Did Tanagawa, he wondered, also have nightmares about who, or what, might be behind the org which might be on the verge of owning the entire earth? Was that why it mattered, even to sandrats and panzer boys, who might win the war between the corps?
"You"re crazy," said the Kid, who was still a long way from mastery of j.a.panese etiquette.
"We are living in crazy times, Zero-san," said Yokoi gently. "Do you not have a saying in America, to the effect that anyone who isn"t a little crazy these days has to be completely insane?"
"We do," admitted the Kid, more soberly than he would have liked. "We surely do."
And as he said it, he asked himself the question whose answer would hit his own personal jackpot, which was: What if they"re right? What the freaking h.e.l.l am I going to do if the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are right? What if I am a freaking alien?