Текст книги "Inherit the Earth"

Автор книги: Brian Stableford

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Eight

S

ilas Arnett dreamed that he was in a lab somewhere: a strange, dilapidated place full of obsolete equipment. He was hunched over a screen, squinting at meaningless data which scrolled by too fast to allow his eyes to keep up. He was working under pressure, desperately thirsty, with a head full of cotton wool, wishing that he were able to concentrate, and wishing also that he could remember what problem he had been put here to solve and why it was so urgent. . . .

At first, when he realized that he was dreaming, he was relieved.

He was relieved because he felt that he could relax, because the problem—whatever it was—was unreal.

Unfortunately, he was wrong. The consciousness into which he descended by slow degrees was a more complex web of discomforts and restraints than the dream he had fled.

His internal technology was dulling all the nastiest sensations, but there was an awkward tangibility about its anesthetic efforts, as if the nanomachines were working under undue pressure with inadequate reserves of strength and ingenuity. He wondered whether it might be his IT that had been keeping him unconscious—there was only so much the most benevolent nanotech could do without suppressing awareness itself—and why, if so, it had released him to wakefulness now. If the nanomachines had done their work properly, he ought to have been feeling far better than he was and he ought to have been lying down in a comfortable bed.

Without opening his eyes he attempted to take census of the bad news.

His wrists and ankles were pinned by two pairs of plastic sheaths, each at least three centimeters broad, which clasped him more tightly when he struggled against them. There was another sheath lightly gripping the head of his prick and some kind of catheter stuck up his backside. He was in a sitting position but his head wasn’t lolling to one side: it was held upright by some device which gently but firmly enfolded his entire skull.

There was light beyond his closed eyelids, but he knew that the device clasping his head had to be a VE hood. When he opened his eyes he would not be looking out upon the world, but into a counterfeit space synthesized from bits of digitized film and computer-generated images.

He supposed that he ought to be grateful that he wasn’t dead, but no such gratitude could extricate itself as yet from the morass of his unease and anxiety.

He put out his tongue to test the limits of the thing enclosing his head, and found—as he had half expected—a pair of teats. He tested the left-hand one with his lips, then seized it in his teeth and teased cold liquid out of it. The thirst afflicting him in his dream had been real, and the orange-flavored juice, slightly syrupy with dissolved glucose, was very welcome.

When he finally consented to open his eyes Silas found himself looking out upon a courtroom. It was an impressionistic image, a mere cartoon rather than a sophisticated product of mimetic videosynthesis. The twelve jurors who were positioned to his left were barely sketched in, and the prosecuting attorney whose position was to the right had little more in the way of features than they did. Directly in front of him was a black-robed judge whose image was more detailed, although he didn’t look any more real. The judge’s face had simply been more carefully drawn, presumably in order to allow for more effective animation.

The judge’s platform was about a meter above the level of the dock whose caricaturish steel spikes rose in front of Arnett’s viewpoint. This allowed its occupant to look down at the prisoner, mingling contempt with hostility.

Silas guessed that he and the “judge” were quite alone within the hypothetical space of the virtual environment. He could not believe that an actual prosecutor and a human jury were going to hook into the shared illusion at some later time. He knew that it must have required a conspiracy of at least four persons—perhaps including sweet, seemingly innocent Catherine—to arrange his abduction, but a real mock trial would require four times as many. There was no shortage of crazy people to be found in the meshes of the Web, but wherever a dozen forgathered in innerspace you could bet your last dose that two would be corpspies and three others potential beanspillers.

For the time being, the counterfeit courtroom wasn’t even under the aegis of an active program. Nothing moved except the judge, and that particular icon was almost certainly a mask, reproducing the facial expressions of a real person. Silas tried to take heart from that. Masks need not bear the slightest resemblance to the actual features of the people using them, but their echoes of tics and mannerisms could offer valuable clues to the identity of their users. If the slightly narrowed expression in those coal black eyes and the tension lines etched upon the raptorial face werethe property of the user rather than the image, he might eventually be able to conjure up an image of the actual eyes and the actual mouth.

“Please state your name for the record,” said the judge. His baritone voice wasn’t obviously distorted but it was too stagey by half.

“Joan of Arc,” said Silas weakly.

“Let the name Silas Arnett be entered in the record,” said the sonorous voice. “I feel obliged to point out, Dr. Arnett, that there really isa record. Every moment of your trial will be preserved for posterity, and any parts of your testimony may be broadcast as we see fit. My advice is that you should conduct yourself as though the whole world were watching. Given the nature of the charges which will be brought against you, that may well be the case.”

“That’s Arc with a c,” Silas said, trying to sound laconic, “not a k.” He wondered whether he ought to be speaking at all. No matter how mad this setup was, there had to be method in it. If he said too much, his words might be edited and recombined into any kind of statement at all. On the other hand, his voice was no secret; if these people could screw up his security systems efficiently enough to remove him from his own home they could certainly plunder the records in his phone hood. He was, in any case, an old man—there must be tens of thousands of recordings of his voice in existence, easily amassable into a database from which clever software could synthesize anything from the Gettysburg Address to a falsetto rendition of “To Be a Pilgrim.”

“Perhaps I should begin by summarizing the procedure,” said the judge calmly. “This is, of course, merely a preliminary hearing. Your trial will not begin until tomorrow, at which time you will be called upon to give evidence under oath. At that time, no refusal to answer the charges brought against you will be tolerated, nor will any dissimulation. The purpose of the present session is to offer you the opportunity to make an opening statement, free of any pressure or duress. Should you wish to make a full confession now, that would, of course, be taken into consideration when your sentence is determined.”

Perhaps I should begin by summarizing the possibilities, Silas thought. The rhetoric suggests Eliminators, but the only reason the Eliminators have remained a thorn in society’s side for so long is that they have no organization. The sophistication of the operation suggests that it’s a corp with real resources—but what kind of corp would snatch a retired playboy like me, and why?

It was not until he reached this impasse that the implications of what the voice had said sunk in. Tomorrow they would begin in earnest, at which time no refusal to answer would be tolerated. That formulation suggested that they could and would employ torture, if necessary. Three days would be the minimum interval required to flush out his internal technology and disable his nanotech defenses against pain, injury, and aging—which implied that he had already been unconscious for at least forty-eight hours.

“Why all the ceremony?” he asked, his voice hardly above a whisper.

“Silas Arnett,” the voice intoned with a solemnity that had to be satirical, “the principal charge laid against you is that you were an accessory to the crimes of Conrad Helier, enemy of mankind. There is no need for you to plead, as your guilt has already been determined. The purpose of this trial is to determine the extent of that guilt, and to establish an appropriate means of expiation.”

“An appropriate means of expiation?” Silas repeated wonderingly. “I thought you people only had one sentence to hand down to those deemed unworthy of immortality: death by any convenient means.”

“Death is not the only means of Elimination,” said the voice, with a sudden injection of apparent sincerity, “as you, Dr. Arnett, know very well.” As the last phrase was intoned, the cartoonish face of the judge hardened considerably—presumably in response to a sudden tension in the features of the man or woman behind it.

Well, at least that tells me what it is they want me to confess, Silas thought, even if it doesn’t tell me why. After all these years, he had actually thought that the matter was dead and buried, but in a world of long-lived people—no matter how expert they might become in the artistry of forgetfulness—nothing was ever comprehensively dead and buried. Expertise in forgetfulness, alas, was not the same as generosity in forgiveness.

There was, Silas supposed, a revealing dishonesty in the fact that the Eliminators were almost the only people who talked freely and openly about the expectation of immortality in a world in which everyone hoped—and almost everyone believed—that the breakthrough to realimmortality would happen within his own lifetime. Serious people were required by reason to hedge the issue around in all sorts of ways, always speaking of emortality rather than immortality, always stressing that nobody could live forever even in a world without aging, always reminding their listeners that disease had not yet been entirelybanished from human affairs and probably never could be, always restating that some injuries were simply too extreme to be repaired even by the cleverest imaginable internal technology, and always remembering—perhaps above all else—that the life of the body and the life of the person were not the same thing . . . but all of that was just pedantry, bluff and bluster to cover up the raw force of underlying conviction that eternal life was truly within reach.

Silas realized that he was struggling reflexively against the straps that bound his wrists and ankles, even though the only effect his struggles had was to make his confinement even closer. Eternal life, it seemed, was no longer within hisreach, and he was in the process of being cast out of the pain-free paradise of the New Utopia. He was not only mortal but punishable, and his guilt had already been determined.

He was tempted to declare that Conrad Helier had not been an enemy of humankind at all—that he had, in fact, been the savior of humankind—but he had a shrewd suspicion that that kind of defense would be seen by his captor, and perhaps by the larger audience to whom his captor intended eventually to speak, as proof of his guilt.

“You have the right to remain silent, of course,” the voice remarked, recovering all of its mocking pomposity. “It would, however, be far wiser to make a free and full confession of your involvement with Conrad Helier’s conspiracy.” The mask had relaxed again, but it was not unexpressive. Silas tried to concentrate his mind upon its subtle shifts in the faint hope that he might be able to penetrate the illusion.

“I’ve got twenty-four hours before the last of my protective nanotech is flushed away,” Silas said, trying his utmost to keep his voice level. “A lot can happen in twenty-four hours. People must be searching for me. Even if Catherine was working for you the alarm will have been raised soon enough.”

“You’re right, of course,” the judge informed him. “The police are searching for you with more than their usual diligence—Interpol has taken charge of the investigation, on the grounds that the Eliminators are a worldwide problem. Damon Hart’s unsavory acquaintances are using their less orthodox methods to search for information as to your whereabouts. The Ahasuerus Foundation is also diverting considerable effort to their own investigation. Were all three to pool their resources they might actually stand a chance of finding you before the trial gets under way—but in a world where privacy is fatally compromised by technology, discretion becomes an instinct and secrecy a passion.”

Silas was genuinely astonished by the list of people who were actively searching for him. “Damon?” he echoed suspiciously. “What’s Damon got to do with this? Why on earth should the Ahasuerus Foundation be interested?”

“Damon Hart is involved because I took care to involve him,” the voice replied with a casualness that was almost insulting. “The Ahasuerus Foundation is interested because I took care to interest them. I omitted to mention, of course, that Conrad Helier will also be doing his utmost to find you—but he is hardly in a position to pool his resources with anyone else.”

“Conrad Helier’s been dead for half a century,” Silas said.

“That’s not true,” said the judge, with equal conviction. “Although I will admit to some slight doubt as to whether or not you knowit to be untrue. How soon was he aware, do you suppose, that you would eventually desert his cause? Did he identify you as his Judas before he went to his carefully contrived crucifixion?”

“I only retired from the team ten years ago,” Silas said.

“Of course. The burdens of parenthood served to resensitize you to your own old age. You developed a passion for the company of the authentically young: naive flesh, naive intelligence. In a way, they’re allConrad Helier’s children, aren’t they? All born from his womb—the womb he gifted to humankind after robbing them of all the wombs they already possessed. He appointed you to foster his son, but he surely considers your defection as a kind of betrayal.”

Unable to help himself, Silas stared at his virtual adversary with a new intensity. He had not seen Conrad Helier for forty-six years, and his memories had faded as all memories did, but he was absolutely certain that Conrad Helier was one of the few people in the world who could come to him masked as artfully as any man could be masked and yet be recognizable.

Whoever his interrogator was, he swiftly decided, it could not possibly be Conrad Helier, or even his ghost.

“Torture can make a man say anything,” Silas said, feeling that he ought to say somethingto cover his fearful confusion. “Anything at all. I know well enough how utterly unused to pain I’ve become. I know that as soon as your nanomech armies have smashed mine to smithereens I’ll be utterly helpless. I’ll say whatever you want me to say—but it will all be worthless, and worse than worthless. It won’t be the truth, and it won’t even looklike the truth. No matter how cleverly you edit your tapes, people will know that it’s a fake. Anybody with half a brain will see through the charade—and even if the police don’t find you while I’m still alive, they’ll find you once I’m dead. This is a farce, and you know it. You can’t possibly gain anything from it.”

Even as he made the speech, though, Silas realized that it couldn’t be as simple as that. Whatever game his captor was playing, it wasn’t just a matter of extorting a confession to post on some Eliminator billboard. Damon had been brought into it, and the Ahasuerus Foundation—and Silas honestly couldn’t imagine why . . . unless, perhaps, the sole purpose of the crime had been to prompt its investigation by parties sufficiently interested and sufficiently powerful to uncover realproof of its motive—proof that would be worth far more than any tricked-up tape of a confession. . . .

“Who are you?” he asked, unable any longer to resist the temptation, although he knew that it would be a pointless admission of weakness. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m a judge,” said the voice flatly. “I’m doing this because someonehas to do it. If humankind is to be worthy of immortality, it ought to begin with a clean slate, don’t you think? Our sins must be admitted, and expiated, if they are not to spoil our new adventure.”

“Who appointed youmy judge and executioner?” Silas retorted, miserably aware of the fact that he was still displaying weakness and terror, even though he had not yet been stripped of all his protective armor.

“The post was vacant,” the judge said. “No one else seemed to be interested in taking it up.”

Silas recognized the words and felt their parodic force. “Fuck off,” he said, with feeling. It seemed, suddenly, to be a direly old-fashioned curse: a verbal formula he had brought with him out of Conrad Helier’s ark; a spell which could not have any force at all in the modern world. The existential significance of sexual intercourse had altered since the old world died, and the dirty words connected with it had lost their warrant of obscenity. Shitand its derivatives still retained their repulsive connotations, but the expletives which had once been strongest of all had lost their fashionability along with their force. Habit might preserve them awhile longer, at least in the language of centenarians like himself, but for all the effect they had one might as well make reference to God’s wounds or the Prophet’s beard.

“The charges laid against you are these,” said the machine-enhanced voice as the lips of the caricature face moved in perfect sync. “First, that between 2095 and 2120 you conspired with Eveline Hywood, Karol Kachellek, Mary Hallam, and others, under the supervision of Conrad Helier, to cause actual bodily harm to some seven billion individuals, that actual bodily harm consisting of the irreversible disabling of their reproductive organs. Second, that you collaborated with Eveline Hywood, Karol Kachellek, Mary Hallam, and others, under the supervision of Conrad Helier, in the design, manufacture, and distribution of the agents of that actual bodily harm, namely the various virus species collectively known as meiotic disrupters or chiasmalytic transformers. You are now formally invited to make a statement in response to these charges.”

“If you had any real evidence,” Silas said stiffly, “you could bring the charges in a real court of law. I don’t have to answer any charges brought by a caricature judge in a cartoon court.”

“You’ve had seventy years to submit yourself to trial by a legitimately constituted court,” said the judge, his mechanical voice dripping acid. “Those who prefer to evade the courts whose legitimacy they acknowledge ought not to protest too loudly when justice catches up with them. This court is the one which has found the means to bring you to trial; it is the one which will determine your fate. You will be given the opportunity to enter your defense before sentence is passed upon you.”

“But you’ve already delivered your verdict, and I doubt that you have it in your power to determine any sentence but immediate execution—which will make you guilty of murder in the eyes of any authentic court in the world.”

“Death is not such a harsh sentence for a man of your kind,” opined the man behind the mask, “when one considers that you—like the vast majority of those previously condemned as unworthy of immortality—have already lived far longer than the natural human life span. One of the principles on which this court is founded is that whatever society bestows upon the individual through the medium of technology, society has every right to withdraw from those who betray their obligations to the commonweal.”

“Eliminators aren’t part of society. They’re just an ill-assorted bunch of murderous maniacs. But you’re no run-of-the-mill Eliminator, are you? You’re something new, or something worse. Psychologically you’re the same—in perfect harmony with the solitary spiders who get their kicks out of dumping malevolent garbage into the data stream in the hope that some other shithead will take it into his head to start blasting—but you’ve got an extra twist in you.”

It was all bluster, but Silas took what comfort he could from its insincerity. Whoever had come to seize him had come well equipped, and however ridiculous this virtual court might be on the surface it was no joke, no merely amateur affair. Someone was taking this business very seriously—whatever the business in question really was. He had to try to figure that out, even if figuring it out couldn’t save him from pain and death. If his sentence were already fixed, and if the police were unable to find him, the only meaningful thing he could do with what remained of his life was to find out who was doing this to him and why—and why now, when it had all happened so long ago.

“You still have time to make a clean breast of it,” the voice informed him, refusing to respond to his insults. “No one can save you, Dr. Arnett, except yourself. Even if your trial were to be interrupted, you would still stand condemned. We are an idea and an ideal rather than an organization, and we can neither be defeated nor frustrated. When human beings live forever, no one will be able to evade justice, because there will be all the time in the world for their sins to find them out. We really do have to be worthyof immortality, Dr. Arnett. You, of all people, should understand that. This is, after all, a world which youhelped to design—a world which could not have come into being had you not collaborated in the careful murder of the world which came before.”

Silas didn’t want to engage in philosophical argument. He wanted to stick to matters of fact. “Will you answer me one question?” he asked sharply.

“Of course I will,” the judge replied, with silky insincerity. “ Wehave no secrets to conceal.”

“Did Catherine set me up? Did she rig the house’s systems to let your people in?” He didn’t imagine that he would be able to trust the answer, but he knew that it was a question that would gnaw away at him if he didn’t voice it.

“As a matter of fact,” the other replied, taking obvious pleasure in the reply, “she had no idea at all that she was carrying the centipedes which insinuated themselves into your domestic systems. We used her, but she is innocent of any responsibility. If anyone betrayed you, Dr. Arnett, it was someone who knew you far better than she.”

Silas hoped that he would be able to resist the lure offered by that answer, but he knew that he wouldn’t. Someonehad set him up for this, and he had to consider everyone a candidate—at least until the time came for him to play the traitor in his turn, when his trial by ordeal began in earnest.