Short fiction complete, p.60
Short Fiction Complete, page 60
“In the name of stability.”
“Yes. So you must understand that the government will not allow you to begin work at any of the genetics laboratories that have been left open. If it learns that you are working this field, they may kill you.”
“Am I expected to comment?” The big smile returned. “No—only to hear me out. I have taken the liberty of starting a small genetics laboratory of my own—safely tucked away from prying eyes. You and several others whom I am able to save from exile can work there. I will try to bring some of the best geneticists and biochemists available to work with you. They will not be leaders of their fields, of course, but they will be the best of those who have escaped banishment. Your work can go on while we try to end the exile of your friends.” Lou said slowly, “After all that’s happened over the past few days it’s—well, meeting a sane man in the government is a jolt.”
Bernard laughed. “There are many of us. And it is not so much that we are sane; we are unafraid. Some others on the Council fear your science. They seek safety in stability and order. I welcome change. I welcome your science. Without progress the world will sink into barbarism.”
For the first time since he had landed his glider, Lou felt himself really relaxing. He grinned at Bernard.
“You don’t know how important those words are.”
“I can guess. I have also taken the liberty of bringing some of the equipment and animal stock from various laboratories to my new location. I understand one of your animals is a gorilla that can talk. Absolutely marvelous!”
“Big George,” Lou murmured. “He’s all right?”
“Yes, the gorilla is healthy.” Bernard seemed amused, “Apparently he was asking for you.”
Lou nodded. “He would be. I promised I’d go back for him.”
“Did you? Well, you will meet him again. “Now, you must realize that my laboratory is a private, even a secret affair. None of the other Ministers knows about it. It’s on an island—and once you are safely there you will not be allowed to leave. Until, that is, the entire business of the exile is settled.”
“But why secret?” Lou asked. “Why don’t you tell the world about the exile? Why keep everything hushed up? Why not blow this thing wide open and see what happens?”
“My dear young friend, the answer to that is not as simple as you might think. The stakes we play for are high. If we make the smallest mistake, we will lose everything. You must trust me to do what is best. At the proper time the world will learn what has happened, I assure you. But that is time we must gain.”
“Okay, I guess you know more about this than I do.”
“Fine.” Bernard beamed again. “Now is there anything you will need especially to continue your work? We have already dismantled your computer and are bringing it to the new laboratory.”
“There’s a computer programer—Bonnie Sterne. She—”
“You want her at the new laboratory?”
“Yes, but she’s not one of the exiles. She’s in Albuquerque. And she might not want to come.”
Bernard waved his objections away. “She will come. I know women a little better than you do. If we tell her that you are safe and want her to be with you, she will come.”
Lou felt as if his mind were somehow stuck in neutral gear as he left Bernard’s office. The Norseman met him at the elevator again and guided him back to the waiting car.
As he sat in the back seat of the car, driving through the chilling late afternoon rain, he told himself that he should feel happy. At least Bernard was on his side, on the side of justice and reason.
Okay, so living on this island will be an exile of sorts, too. But at least I’ll be working and Bonnie’ll be there. What more could I want?
But Lou didn’t feel happy at all, just vaguely uneasy and wary. He realized that he didn’t have the faintest idea of where the Norseman was taking him.
XI
THE laboratory was on a Pacific island, Lou guessed from the number of orientals around the place. Most of the office people were Chinese or Malay. Half the computer programers were Japanese.
Lou had been flown in the same day he talked to Bernard. Anton Kori had been on the plane with him, the only other passenger. Most of the trip had been made at night neither Kori nor Lou could tell where they had been going, except that they had been heading roughly southeast when the sun had set. The crew two Arahic-looking pilots and a black engineer had not spoken to them.
Lou and Kori had been separated at landing. A Chinese of about Lou’s own age had driven Lou in an open-topped turbowagon from the jet landing pad along a narrow road that seemed to have been cut into a jungle. He had pulled up at a plastic prefab dormitory building and had shown Lou to a room on the ground floor. Not much furniture, but the bed was comfortable and Lou had fallen asleep before he had even taken off his shoes.
Breakfast had been brought to him by the same Chinese the next morning.
“The director of the laboratory asked me to convey his greetings to you,” he had said. “He requests that you enjoy yourself this morning in any way you desire. He will meet you here for lunch. At noon precisely.”
Lou had glanced at his wrist-watch.
“I took the liberty of setting it correctly for you.”
Looking up sharply at him, Lou had asked, “While I was asleep?”
The Chinese had nodded, with the faintest trace of a smile on his otherwise impassive face.
Lou spent the morning walking around the island. It was small: no more than a half-dozen kilometers long, and half that wide. It was really nothing more than a pair of heavily wooded hills poking out of the water. The trees were palms and other tropical species that Lou couldn’t identify.
The sun was hot but the ocean breeze was beautiful. White sand beaches ringed the island and a coral reef farther out broke the surf, leaving a small inlet at one end. Lou saw a fair-sized air cushion ship resting in the gentle swells of the inlet. There was a dock and a few plain white buildings. Slightly away from the buildings was the jet landing pad, an adequate strip of well-kept grass. The plane was gone now. There was no runway for bigger jets anywhere on the island; the vertical landing and takeoff craft were the only planes that could come to the island and leave.
The dormitory building was at the opposite end of the island, connected to the inlet by the single road through the trees. In the middle of the island, set into the fairly flat area between the two hills, were the laboratory buildings.
The labs were tucked away in the shade of tall trees. There were six buildings in all, filled with the bustling, nearly frantic action of men unpacking huge crates of equipment and working hard to set them up as quickly as possible. Their shouting and hammering drove Lou away very quickly. He only stayed long enough to make certain that they weren’t damaging the equipment they were handling. They weren’t. They knew what they were doing.
And then, as he passed between two of the labs, Lou heard a scratchy hoarse voice calling, “Uncle Lou—”
He looked up and saw Big George standing erect, his huge arms upraised so that his hands rested on the top of the nine-foot wire screen fence that stood between them. The fence bulged dangerously under his weight.
“Hey, Georgy!” Lou felt his face stretch into its biggest smile in days as he ran toward the fence.
The gorilla jumped up and down and slapped his sides with excitement. “Uncle Lou! Uncle Lou!”
“Georgy, you okay?” Lou asked as he reached the fence.
“Yes, yes. Strangers scared me at first, but they are very nice to me. It was lonesome, though, without you or any of my other friends.”
“Well, I’m here now. Everything’s going to be okay, Georgy. Come on down to that gate over there and I’ll get you out of this compound.”
Big George lumbered along the fence, knuckles on the ground. Lou saw that the gate had no lock on it, just a simple latch. He opened it.
George lurched out and grabbed Lou in his immense arms.
“Hey—careful!” Lou laughed as George lifted him off his feet, strong enough to crush him, gentle enough to handle an equal amount of nitroglycerin without danger.
Lou pounded the gorilla’s hairy shoulders happily. The warmth of his body, even his scent, carried the impression of huge jungle strength. And if the gorilla could have laughed or even smiled, he would have right then.
A pistol shot cracked nearby. Startled, George jerked and nearly let Lou fall. Lou saw sudden fear in the gorilla’s eyes, then turned to see some sort of uniformed guard pointing a pistol at them.
“Slop—put that man down!” the guard yelled.
“Shut up,” Lou snapped. “And put that stupid gun away. We’re old friends. He’s not hurting me.”
The guard’s mouth dropped open.
“Let me down,” Lou said softly to George. The gorilla stood him carefully on his feet.
Walking to the wide-eyed guard, Lou said, “Put that gun away and don’t let me catch you doing anything that hurts that gorilla or frightens him in any way. Do you understand?”
“I—I thought—”
“You thought wrong. Big George wouldn’t hurt anybody—unless they scared him so badly that he lashed out in fright.”
“I was only—”
“You were wrong. Now get out of here.”
“Yes, sir.” The guard turned and walked away.
Lou stayed with Big George until lunchtime—but inside the relative safety of the wire screen that marked off the gorilla’s compound. Too many people out there who’ve been frightened by bad movies. And too many guns. The compound was wide and wild, Lou saw. George had plenty of room, big trees, a stream, even the slope of one of the hills to climb.
“You’d better stay inside,” Lou said as he left the gorilla at the gate, “until the people around here get to know you better. I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble.”
“I know,” George whispered. “I’ll be good.”
Lou smiled at him. “Sure you will. I’ll see you soon.”
HE WALKED briskly back toward his quarters, knowing that George would spend the better part of the afternoon feeding himself. To keep him satisfied took a huge supply of fruits and vegetables. By the time Lou approached the white prefab building, he felt sweaty and uncomfortable. The day was beginning to heat up and the breeze had slackened.
A turbowagon was sitting in front of the dorm. Its driver wore the same sort of uniform the gun-waving guard had worn. The driver also was armed.
In the back seat an older man was reading some papers. His face was mild and milky white, with a high balding forehead and thin sandy hair that had started to turn gray.
He looked up as Lou’s sandals crunched on the gravel.
“Ah—Mr. Christopher.”
Lou nodded and put on a smile as he walked up to the wagon.
“I’m Donald Marcus, the head of the laboratory.” Marcus put out a hand and Lou shook it. The grip was limp, almost slippery.
“Get in and we’ll go down to the lab area. I want you to see the computer setup before we have lunch.” Lou climbed up into the wagon and sat beside his new boss.
“By the way,” Marcus said as they drove off, “did you know that you’re three minutes late?”
Without even blinking, Lou snapped back, “My guard must have set my watch wrong.”
Marcus looked a little startled but said nothing.
The computer was housed in a building of its own to one side of the lab complex and not far from Big George’s compound.
Inside the one-story building chaos prevailed. Workmen were uncrating bulky consoles, ripping off the protective plastic coverings, leaving huge gobs of spongy foam heaped all over the floor. Carpenters were putting up partitions with drills and power saws. Someone was pounding on a wall. Everyone was talking, calling back and forth, shouting orders or responses, mostly in singsong Chinese. Lou was nearly run down by four men who, with backs bent and heads down, were wheeling in the massive main control desk at breakneck speed from the open double doors at one end of the building.
The room was hot and sticky and smelled of new plastic and machine oil. Lou felt perspiration trickling down his body.
“Most of these components,” Marcus yelled over the din, “come from your computer system at the Genetics Institute.”
Lou nodded but kept his eyes on the nearest workmen, who were busily laying a heavy cable across the floor.
“We brought the logic circuits and the whole memory bank.”
“What about the voice circuits and input software?” Lou shouted.
Marcus lowered his voice a notch. “Um, we didn’t bring the voice circuits or the vocal input units. You’ll have to type your inputs to the computer and get the replies on the viewscreen or printer, just as with any ordinary machine.”
“Why? How come?”
Marcus avoided Lou’s eyes. “Well, we didn’t have the time or the transportation capacity to take everything. Besides—” his voice dropped to a whisper—“with all these Asians around as workmen and technicians, if they heard a computer talk they’d probably be scared out of their skulls. They’d think it was devils or something supernatural.”
Lou stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
Marcus stopped him with an upraised hand. “No, I’m serious. Sure, we have some good people on the technical staff, but the hired hands are straight from the hill country, believe me. My own driver—he’s a great mechanic, don’t get me wrong. But he keeps some powdered bones in a bag around his neck. Claims they keep evil spirits away.”
When they went outside and entered the car, Lou took a careful look. Sure enough, the driver had a thin leather thong around his neck, and a tiny bag hung at the end of it.
They had lunch on the veranda of Marcus’ quarters, a house made of real stone and wood, with a red tile roof that overhung the walls by several feet and made welcome shade against the heat of the sun. The house was atop the hill that overlooked the little blue-water inlet, and the breeze from the ocean made the veranda pleasant. Lou leaned back in a wicker chair, watching the moisture beading on the outside of his iced drink, listening to the songbirds in the flowering bushes that surrounded the house.
“A month ago,” Marcus was saying, “this was the only house on the island. By the end of this week we’ll have more than a hundred people here—twenty of them scientists like yourself.”
“I’m not a scientist,” Lou said automatically. “I’m a computer engineer.”
Marcus smiled wanly. “Yes, I know. But anybody who understands this genetics business looks like a scientist to me. I’m a civil engineer by training. Right now I guess I’m a straw boss.”
The young Malay driver served them lunch on a round bamboo table, his little bag of magic dangling between Lou and Marcus whenever he bent over to put something on the table.
“Minister Bernard’s plan,” Marcus said as they ate, “is to carry on the work that was going on at the top genetics labs.”
Lou shook his head. “Twenty men can’t do the work of two thousand. Especially when those two thousand were the best in their fields.”
Marcus chewed thoughtfully. He swallowed and said, “I know it won’t be easy. We’ve brought some good people here—but you’re perfectly right, they’re not the best. And we couldn’t even bring too many of them without the government’s catching on to what we’re trying to do.”
“Just what are you trying to do?”
“Exactly what I told you,” Marcus said, concentrating his gaze on a leaf of salad that was eluding his fork. “We’re going to continue the work you were doing at the Institute. We’re going to complete it and show the world that we can alter a human embryo deliberately and safely.
Once we’ve announced that news, and told the people that the government tried to prevent this work from being completed, the government will have to relent and allow your friends to return to their homes and their work.”
Lou felt an old excitement tingling through his body. “The next step in evolution,” he said softly. “Man’s conscious improvement of his own mind and body.”
Marcus leaned back in his chair. “It’s criminal,” Lou flared, “for the government to stop this work. In a generation or two we could be turning out people who are physically and mentally perfect.”
Smiling, Marcus said, “Yes, we can. And we will, if you can do your part in this job. You realize, don’t you, that you’re the most important human being on Earth?”
LOU stared at Marcus, who was smiling easily at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s very simple,” Marcus explained. “All of the world’s top geneticists and biochemists have been sent into exile. They’re being shipped to their satellite prison right now. Of all the top men working on genetic engineering, you’re the only one we’ve been able to save.”
“But—”
“Oh, we’ve rounded up a few of the second-string people and we’ve brought in a couple of young pups, bright boys, but the ink is still wet on their diplomas. You’re the only experienced top-flight man we have.”
“But I’m a computer engineer.”
“Maybe, but your work is the key to the whole project. You have the computer to handle all the thousands of variables involved in tinkering with the genes, we don’t dare try anything. It would be too dangerous.”
Lou agreed, “Yes—you have to have the computer plot out all the possible side effects of any change you make. Otherwise you wouldn’t know for several lifetimes if you were making the zygote better or worse.”
Marcus said, “And you’re the only man who was close enough to the geneticists to understand their computer coding system. We’ve checked all over the world, believe me. None of the other labs were as close to success as your Institute. And none of them had a computer system as sophisticated as yours. So that makes you the key man. The fate of your friends—the fate of the whole world—is in your hands.”
Lou said, “Well—it’s really in Ramo’s hands. Ramo has the whole thing wrapped up in his memory banks.”
