"Not quite," said the Kid. "There"s still the news. I want to know the state of play between the corps. Where"s the war at, now that Mitsu-Makema have cooled things down again?"
"You think anyone takes the trouble to tell me?" asked Homer sarcastically. "s.h.i.t, Kid, their left hands don"t even tell their right hands what they"re doing."
"A guy called Tanagawa told me that GenTech are getting close to owning the whole worlda"and that they"re going over the top in trying to push the other corps around. Is that true? An informed opinion will do."
Homer pursed his lips. "Would that be Junichi Tanagawa?" he asked.
"That"s the one," the Kid confirmed.
"You really talked to him?"
"Don"t stall me, Homer. You want me out of here, remember?"
Homer remembered. "There"s a rumour," he said, slowly, "that Tanagawa is into some pretty heavy talks with Chromicon," he said. "The word is hat GenTech are pretty p.i.s.sed off about it. If I"d have to guess, I"d say that GenTech"s rivals are beginning to gang up against them. If they were looking to starting kicking the s.h.i.t out of the other corps, I"d hazard a guess that they"ll have to back off a bit now. Partly because they lost whatever was on the disc, partly because they couldn"t administer a tough enough lesson to M-M. They have a lot to hold against you, Kida"I hope you can take the heat?"
The Kid nodded, slowly. "It"s a good question," he admitted. "But I came out of his with new friends as well as angrier enemies. I figure that the stakes have got a lot higher, but the game"s still the same. You want to know what was on the disc that GenTech were desperate to keep to themselves?"
Homer finished off the beer and crushed the can in his fist. When it came to beer cans, he was a real strong man. "Not really" he said. "You"ve given me more than enougha"knowing too much can get a guy iced. Like I said before, I"d be happy if you"d just stay away from me. You"re so hot I could easily get burned. I"m not a hero, Kid. I manufacture them, but I"m not stupid enough to be one. Heroes die young."
"You already avoided that," the Kid pointed out.
"And I want to keep on avoiding it," Homer said. "I know I have to die one day, but I don"t want to do it for a long time yet."
"Is GenTech trying to take over the whole world?" asked the Kid suddenly.
Homer shrugged, though he didn"t feel very care-free. "Aren"t they all?" he answered.
"Why?"
"Because it"s the name of the game," Homer told him. "Power breeds power, success breeds ambition. It"s an old, old story. All empires expand, and the faster they expand the greedier they get. The corps are no differenta"it"s just that their version of Alexander the Great is a committee in dark suits. Whatever they have can never be enougha"they want it all. But they can never have it, Kid, because there"s just too much of it. The iron law of oligarchy cuts both ways. Only a small number of people can actually run things, but what they can feasibly run is bounded too. You can own your back garden because you can see it, walk across it and work it in any way you want to. An org can own a whole city, maybe even a little nationa"but the more anybody owns, the less control they have over it. Maybe GenTech could own the world, on papera"but it would still be the world, full of uncontrollable factors, and full of outlaws. For the likes of you and me, it doesn"t matter a d.a.m.n who owns the world, Kid. Our lives will still be the same."
"Tanagawa told me that GenTech might be heavily influenced, if not actually controlled, by a bunch of crazies called the Temple," said the Kid, matter-of-factly. "He says that they"re fanatics who intend to wipe out the whole human racea"to bring about the apocalypse."
"Do you believe him?" asked Homer.
"Do you?" countered the Kid.
"I"m a TV man," said Homer. "I don"t believe my own mother when she tells me it"s time for tea. But you might care to bear in mind that Mr Tanagawa is the one who"s building underground Arks, not GenTech. You want my advice, Kid, you"ll forget it. The world might end tomorrow, but the only way we can live our lives is to a.s.sume that it won"t. There"s nothing the likes of you and me can do about anything at all, Kid, except try to make sure that we have a stock of cold beer in the fridge. Go cultivate your garden, Kid, and try to get a few laughs along the way. That"s all there is and all there ever can be."
The Kid looked across at the book which Homer had laid down on his pillow. "It doesn"t look like science fiction," he said irrelevantly.
"I don"t like science fiction," Homer told him. "It"s too d.a.m.n realistic for my taste. Beneath this careworn exterior I have the heart of an old man. This is Schopenhauer. They used to call him the great pessimist, because he pointed out that anyone who looks at the world without rose-tinted gla.s.ses on has to recognize that opportunities for having a really lousy time far outnumber opportunities for enjoying yourself."
"Did anybody ever doubt it?" asked the Kid.
"Not me," Homer told him. "Schopenhauer reckoned that we wouldn"t be able to keep going at all if it wasn"t for some blind and stupid will to live which drives us on in spite of the odds being stacked against us. Trouble is, he said, once we become enlightened we begin to see what a dumb a.s.shole that blind will to live really isa"then, we have to use our brains to come up with some Idea that will keep us going regardless. You got an Idea, Kid, to keep you going?"
"Yes," said the Kid. "I have."
Homer sighed. "Well, Kid," he said, "you"re one up on me. Good luck to you."
"You"re not a ghost dancer at all," observed the Kid. "You don"t have that much conviction."
"No," admitted Homer, without feeling any urge to congratulate himself about it. "I"m no ghost dancer. n.o.body in his right mind is."
"I am," said the Kid.
"I know," said Homer, not even certain in his own mind whether he should try to sound contemptuous or envious. "I know."
6.
Carl was astonished when Dr Zarathustra turned up at his quarters. It was not simply an unprecedented event but one hardly imaginablea"as though the mountain had, for once, decided to come to the man. Carl couldn"t actually manage to stand up, but moved as though to put his feet on the floor instead of the couch. The scientist instructed him, by means of a cursory hand gesture, to remain as he was, so he contented himself with switching off the TV.
"I"ve read your report," said Zarathustra, even before he had realigned the chair to his satisfaction and sat down upon it.
"Oh," said Carl dolefully. "I let you downa"I"m sorry."
"It appears from all the evidence that the major fault was not yours," said the bioscientist, calmly. "Mr Pasco"s tendency to rely on his impulses seems to have led him consistently astray. The Security Division were wise to dispense with his services."
"He"ll go after Kid Zero," Carl predicted, realizing as he said it that SecDiv probably knew that perfectly well. Firing Ray Pasco was like firing a missilea"an effective way of getting things done, provided that the launcher was pointed in the right direction. But he felt forced to add: "He won"t get him. The Kid"s too slippery, even without the snake."
"One more childish vendetta," said the Doc, "will hardly make any difference to the way the world is going. The failure to recover my data might well make a difference, but when personal pride and vulgar commercial interests are set asidea"as they must be, nowa"the consequences might be more benign than disastrous. There are times when I am not entirely certain that my loyalties to the cause of science are reconcilable with the loyalties which I owe to GenTech."
Carl blinked, and couldn"t help looking round. If the room was bugged at all, the bug was probably feeding its signal to an automatic recorder which would never be inspected, but that didn"t mean that it was safe to indulge in careless talk.
Nevertheless, he said: "Are you in trouble with the boardroom suits, Doc?"
The Doc permitted himself an uncharacteristic wan smile. "We"re all out of favour just now," he said. "But yes, I suppose you could say that I"m in trouble. You might be glad about thata"the fact that Mr Pasco and I are taking the lion"s share of our masters" displeasure may help to deflect attention from you."
"Does that mean I get to keep my job?" asked Carl uncertainly. He had been on the brink of asking a much more delicate question, about Bro and the possibility of making whole armies of poisonous soldiers just like him, and whether Doc Zarathustra had really tried to hide that possibility from his own bosses by simply failing to call it to their attention until the secret was out and therefore useless. But there were some things which simply could not be said within the ear-filled walls of a GenTech establishmenta"and maybe oughtn"t to be said anywhere, by sane and sensible men.
"We both get to keep our jobs," the Doc told him. "No matter how displeased my masters are, they know that I am indispensablea"and I know that you are as trustworthy a man as I could hope to see in your position. We both have to pick up the pieces, and get on with our work."
"Thanks," said Carl, surprised by the depth of his own relief. "And thanks for coming to tell me."
"There are a couple of points in your report which I wanted to check with you," said Zarathustra, suddenly back in his usual businesslike groove.
"Fire away," said Carl, confident now that he wouldn"t be taken too literally.
"According to Kid Zero," said the scientist, "the scientists at Mitsu-Makema think that the rise in the mutation rate may be due to the arrival on earth of alien DNA."
"That"s what he said," Carl confirmed. "He didn"t elaborate." He remembered clearly enough, though, that the Kid had added a few more comments, which he had thought it more diplomatic to exclude from his report.
"It"s possible, of course, that this is disinformation," said Zarathustra. "Perhaps he was told this in order to pa.s.s it on to us, so that our attention would be deflected away from more profitable lines of conjecture."
Carl initially a.s.sumed that the scientist was talking to himself, but the pregnant pause which followed soon made him aware that he was expected to respond to these speculations in some way.
"I don"t think so," he said. "I can"t believe that Mitsu-Makema expected us to spring the Kid the way we did. They may be subtle, but they"re not that subtle."
"I"m not so sure," said Zarathustra. "I think you"re probably right, but I also think that the Machiavellian minds of the directors may see things differently. It is conceivable, I suppose, that taking possession of my data was only one of the reasons why they seized the boya"it is conceivable that they actually wanted to provoke the attack which was subsequently launched against their Antarctic base."
"Why would they do that?" asked Carl.
"Simply to test their defences, perhapsa"but I think it more likely that they wanted an excuse to hit back at us. They wanted to hurt us, but they did not want to be seen to strike the first blow. I suspect that they wanted to injure GenTech"s reputation as well as its researcha"to make GenTech look like the villains of the piece, in order to encourage others to favour their cause over ours."
"It"s too deep for me," confessed Carl. "Anyway, they didn"t hit back, did they? I thought that was the whole pointa"their seeming attack on the base was just a trick, to help Kid Zero gel away."
"Alas no," said Zarathustra. "That, I fear, was the real subtlety. The attack was very real, and quite unexpected. The immediate inclination of our masters seems to be towards secrecya"they are reluctant to tell the world exactly what did happen in order to avoid further embarra.s.sment."
"What did they do?" asked Carl wonderingly.
Zarathustra reached into his pocket and produced a handful of objects which looked like lengths of twisted wire. They were about half an inch long and a tenth of an inch thick, and they had what looked like blobs of gla.s.s at either end.
"What are they?" asked Carl.
"Vermiform robots," answered Zarathustra. "A remarkably sophisticated exercise in microminiaturization. They were dropped all over the base by those apparently-innocuous toy airplanes as they pa.s.sed over the compound. They were programmed to burrow deep into the soil."
"Bugs," said Carl, catching the scientist"s drift. "They"re like the things that Carey Castle sent through the walls in the Undergrounda"except that these don"t have to trail a wire all the way back to home base in order to get a signal back. They"ve got some kind of inbuilt transmittera"but that would mean that we"d be able to detect them as soon as they became active."
"True," said Zarathustra. "But we wouldn"t be able to stop the initial data-pulse being sent and received. We"ve located a few hundred of the things, but there must be hundreds morea"possibly thousandsa"lying dormant under the base. One by one they can work their way back to the surface during the next few monthsa"or yearsa"and each one is potentially capable of giving M-M a glimpse of what we"re doing here. The chances of their getting anything substantial out are slim, but they"re not negligible. The danger is just sufficient to have considerable nuisance value. We may have to move the entire base to a new location if we can"t devise an adequate defence. We probably can, but it will take time, and time is a valuable commodity here. We have men working on it alreadya"men who might be doing more constructive work."
Carl thought about it for a moment or two, and added: "I bet we have other men working on our next play. I bet we have men trying to think up a practical joke which is just as underhanded, just as subtle and just as dirty."
"I"m sure that we have," said Zarathustra quietly.
"But not you," said Carl. "You"re still working on the mutants, aren"t you?"
The scientist shook his head. "I"ve turned it over to someone else for now," he said. "All my data on the subject is public propertya"it"s probably time for some fresh ideas. I"m going back to what I do best: human engineering. Whatever the mutants are, that"s the way to counter any threat they may pose. Control over the genetic process is the only way to protect ourselves against genetic damage, whether the damage is random disease or alien attack. If the war between the corporations is going to escalate, we"re going to need much better ways to protect our frail flesh against all the ways that modern science has to hurt it."
"Is the war between the corps hotting up?" asked Carl, again anxious about what it might be safe to be heard to say or to be known to know. Silently, he cursed Kid Zero"s big mouth, and the curiosity which had been awakened in him by all that the Kid had told him while they were making their slow way back from Antarctica.
"Warmongers move in mysterious ways their wonders to perform," said the Doc sourly. "Who would tell us, if it were so?"
Carl looked reflexively around again, as he always did when he was about to commit an unforgivable indiscretion. It didn"t help, but it still seemed somehow necessary.
"Doc," he said, "who, exactly, are we working for?"
"Mankind," Zarathustra told him. "Our children, and our children"s children. All the people of the future."
"No," said Carl unhappily. "That"s not what I mean. Who really pays our wages? The boardroom suits are just managersa"employees like you and me. Who really pulls the strings, Doc? Who actually owns GenTech?" It was, he thought, a sufficiently hypothetical question not to cause too much alarm if anyone was listeninga"or, more likely, if anyone ever got around to playing back the tape.
Dr Zarathustra looked at him in a peculiar way, which spoke of suspicions too deep and complicated to fathom. "The shareholders," said the Doc eventually. "Of whom, it is said, there are too many to count."
"Which may be true, in theory," Carl persisted. "Except that most of them don"t do anything at all except draw their dividendsa"but someone, somewhere, decides policy. Someone, somewhere, is running this war against Mitsu-Makema and Chromicona"not to mention the mafia, and I don"t know who else. Who decides, Doc? Whose war is it, and why do we let them use us to fight it?"
"I don"t know whose war it is," said Zarathustra straightforwardly. "But I know why I let them use me to fight ita"because I have a war of my own to fight, against ignorance and impotence, against the perishability of human life. GenTech creates the conditions in which I can fight my war, so I let them fight theirs. It"s not really a war, you know, Carla"it"s only commercial compet.i.tion."
Carl hesitated, wondering if he dared ask the next questiona"and, if so, how to phrase it. Finally, he said: "Sometimes I worry about the number of crazies there are in the world, Doc. People like the Josephites. Sometimes I ask myself whether there are so many people out there who can"t wait for the world to end that they might actually contrive to end it."
It wasn"t perfect; it wasn"t even a real questiona"but it was as much as Carl dared to say. There was no way in the world he was going to mention the word "Temple".
"There"s enough to be afraid of without conjuring up phantoms of the imagination," Zarathustra told him. "If people like that had real power, the world might be in one h.e.l.l of a mess, but people with power tend to become so intently interested in the affairs of this world that they forget all about the nexta"for which we should all be profoundly grateful. On the other hand it is much easier to maim people than improve them, and it"s much easier to make the material world into h.e.l.l than into Heaven. Unless the people who run things really want to make things better, things will get worse. That"s inevitable."
Carl looked down at his hands, for no particular reason. "You"re right," he admitted. "I know that. But I don"t know who"s running the world nowadaysa"and the way things are going, I sure as h.e.l.l wouldn"t want to take it on trust that their main motive is to make things better, would you?"
"Mine is," Zarathustra a.s.sured him. "They hire me to do it."
"But sometimes," said Carl, wishing that his ankle didn"t hurt so much, "things go wronga"like they did with Mary and Bro. Sometimes I wonder whether trying to figure out ways to make people better is a dangerous business, because whatever can be used to make people better can also be used destructively. Didn"t that guy who made the first atom bomb say something about scientists learning the meaning of sin?"
Zarathustra"s blue-eyed stare never wavered, It was much brighter and much steadier than Kid Zero"s stare, which seemed weak and mean by comparison.
"Carl," said the Doc, "in science there is no sin except stupidity."
Carl shivered suddenly, and was subject to a most remarkable momentary hallucination, in which it seemed that Zarathustra"s features became blurred because another face was superimposed upon his, like a translucent mask.
The other face was Bro"s face, as Carl had seen it in that desperate moment when Bro had figured out what had happened to him.
The image was gone in an instant, but it left Carl with an unreasonably creepy feeling of deja vua"almost as though, perhaps in some mysterious former incarnation, he had lived the moment before. He cast about for something else to say, in order to rescue himself from the shock and the misery.
"Did you know that Mitsu-Makema is building underground Arks?" he asked unhappily. "Hidey-holes secure enough to come through any imaginable catastrophe."
"So I"ve heard," said the scientist.
"But we"re not," said Carl. "Are we?"
"Not as far as I know," agreed Zarathustra. "But that might only mean that we don"t think we"ll need them."
Carl nodded again, and let out a long and quiet sigh.
"You could quit," Zarathustra pointed out. "Maybe you could get a job with M-M, if you want to know that there"s an Ark available come the day of the deluge."
"Yeah," said Carl sourly. "Maybe."
"We do what we can, Carl," said Zarathustra softly. "We all do what we can."
"Sure," said Carl, in a lackl.u.s.tre fashion. He couldn"t disagree. Everyone did what he could, and what he thought was best. But even as he said it to himself, he couldn"t help thinking of Kid Zero, out there in the desert, plotting his next act of vengeful, meaningless destruction, with Ray Pasco on his trail.
We do what we can, he thought. The trouble with the world is that most of us can"t do anything at alla"and the only way some of us can display the fact that we exist is to destroy what other people make and what other people have. That"s the last and least of all the kinds of freedoma"and if the people who exercise it are really the only free men in America, what hope can there be for the Doc"s better world?
"Take your time, Carl," said the Doc gently. "When your ankle"s healed, come back to work. We have a great deal to doa"more than you can possibly imagine."