Part 12 (1/2)
”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 fas.h.i.+on, ”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 owners.h.i.+p of the entire earth. That process has nearly reached its end, Zero-san. But the end is supposed to be owners.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 s.h.i.+ver suddenly, but it's not a physical shuddera”it's an internal s.h.i.+ver, 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.