‘Hmm! You’ll have to watch out for this one. He turns up everywhere, and he’s cleverer than the devil. I’ll speak to you later. Manalone, come with me. This seems an ideal opportunity for our little chat.’
Wonderingly, Manalone did as he was told. The grip on his arm left him no option. The Colonel led him through to a well-appointed office and bade him take a seat.
‘You look as though you could use a drink.’
‘It’s not every day one gets dismissed from the human race.’
‘It’s more than a figure of speech, I assure you. But you won’t see its significance. With luck, perhaps you will one day.’
‘And without luck?’
Shears poured two glasses of spirit. ‘Without luck you won’t be around to worry. So either way is fine with me. You’re well past the point of no return.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means you have to make the complete grade on the test, or else I order your execution. You know too much already, and there’s no third way.’
‘What sort of test is this?’
‘That you won’t know until you come to the end of it – if ever. Very few do. But with your intellect you stand a fighting chance. Are you ready to answer some questions?’
‘I’m
prepared to make an exchange for a few answers.’
‘You’re a fantastic character, Manalone. Not many men dare to beard me in my own office. Suppose we talk about Raper’s list. You don’t still deny you have it?’
‘You know damn well I’ve got it, so why keep asking? It’s a list of subject headings all somehow related to aspects of overpopulation. Not one of the articles on the list carries a security rating, and they’re all available from the library computer. Frankly, its not security information, and nothing about it justifies Paul Raper’s death.’
Shears shook his head. ‘You’re wrong, you know. Individually the articles may be innocent, but grouped together, they’re dangerous. It’s the association that’s critical. We’re all sitting on top of a social and biological bomb. Raper was trying to light the fuse. By making such assemblies of ideas he came dangerously close to blowing the whole damn mess.’
‘So you executed him?’
‘And half a million others. Information is a very potent force. Like any other force, it can be used for destruction, conservation or creation. It’s not the information that counts, but the qualities and intentions of the user.’
‘And Paul was the wrong type?’
‘Raper used information the way political terrorists use bombs. He made dangerous parcels of it, then left it around near unsuspecting innocents, hoping it would go bang and destroy something. Unfortunately for him, the balance of the forces ranged around is too precarious for us to allow him to continue.’
‘And Oman – tell me about Pierce Oman?’
‘Oman was one of the aforesaid innocents. He’d acquired too much information for his own comfort, but didn’t have the capacity to make sense of it. Thus he was a misery to himself and a menace to us.’
‘They tortured him to death,’ said Manalone in a flat voice.
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Shears. ‘But it alters nothing. We don’t pretend to justify our operations on humanitarian grounds. Time’s running out, and only the quick and the desperate can give us a chance for survival. But I don’t see why the hell I’m answering your questions. You’re here to answer mine.’
‘But you seem
to have all the answers.’ Manalone was critical. ‘All I’ve got is questions without a problem to hang them on to.’
‘That’s the way it has to be, Manalone. Because if the problem really showed through, we’d have no chance at all of finding a solution.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re starting at the wrong end of human evolution. From this point on, it’s all regression until we finish back swinging from the trees – except that we haven’t left many trees to swing from. But we daren’t let the facts become known.’
‘What facts?’
‘Human intelligence is on the decline. In not too many years the human race is going to lose the capacity to maintain the machine culture which supports the fantastic level of overpopulation. The way down the evolutionary scale will be even bloodier and hungrier and tougher than was the way up.’
‘But a change like that would take many thousands of years,’ protested Manalone.
The lines on Shears’ face were not creases, they were deep-etched clefts.
‘I wish it was true, Manalone. But the fact is that the process’ll be substantially complete in about five generations.’
‘Hell, that’s impossible! Alterations of species’ characteristics by genetic mutation and natural selection can’t operate that fast.’
‘The mutations have already taken place. The regressive genes are already predominant throughout the human species. Natural selection will get its chance when our teeming millions start tearing each other apart as the machines falter and the food supply fails. Don’t underestimate the scale of the catastrophe. Only about one in a million will survive, and he’ll inherit a world which wouldn’t be coveted by the common rat.’
‘If all this is true, don’t you think that people have a right to know it?’
‘It’s not a question of rights. The anger and the fear would feed a mass hysteria that could only hasten the end. It could possibly finish our civilization within ten years. We need time either to find a solution to the problem or to build a social structure which will let the human race down gently.’
‘I understand
the fear, but not the anger.’
‘Manalone – this isn’t a natural disaster. This is the result of deliberate interference with Man’s genetic heritage. It’s the backlash of an experiment that failed.’
‘Deliberate?’ It was Manalone’s second major shock of the day.
‘You knew something ran off the rails, Manalone – but this doesn’t seem to be it. This explains the shortage of tomorrows, but not the holes in reality. This explains the police state, but not what happened to gravity and momentum. It explains what happened to Paul, but not what’s happening to you.’
There was a knock on the door and a clerk entered hurriedly. He handed a piece of paper to Colonel Shears, who read it with his face full of frank disbelief.
Manalone froze. Even from a distance he could recognize the typical format of an Automated Mills invoice. He was prepared to meet the anger on Shears’ face but the look of wan anguish was something he had not expected.
‘Manalone, you bloody fool! You stupid, incredible idiot!’ Shears’ worry drove him from his desk. He ran to the outer office, paper in hand, shouting for subordinates to muster.
Manalone sat nonplussed. Had he known earlier the things Shears had just told him, he might not have released his computer deposition. As it was, he felt no remorse about calling into question things which had been deliberately concealed from himself. However, he was considerably alarmed by the tenor of the reaction his deposition had evoked. Anger he had expected – but a state of crash emergency had been beyond his anticipation.
‘A basic blunder, Manalone. If Paul used information like terrorists’ bombs, you’ve used it like a nuclear weapon. In the circumstances, you’ve considerably overplayed your hand. Shears has told you some of the facts, but not all of them. The questions you’ve asked go beyond the territory even Shears was prepared to discuss. In the cause of personal survival, there’s only one course open to you – hell, you’ve got to run, boy!’
In the atmosphere of
confusion in the outer office, he managed to slip through without being noticed. He could scarcely believe his luck as he reached the elevator without being challenged. Minutes later he was out of the building and running for an autram which had just been vacated on the road outside.
It was only when he began to dial his destination that he realized that habit and necessity had caused him to make a mistake. Having no cash in his pocket, he had automatically used his ComCredit card to identify his credit. His identity and his destination would go immediately on computer-file for Shears to pick out at his leisure. As soon as he recognized the fact, Manalone cancelled the destination code and dialled again, altering the last two digits. This he calculated should place him at the opposite end of his road, if he understood the system right.
The autram moved off and began to negotiate the traffic lanes, then was prematurely halted as several official manudrive vehicles with sirens and flashing beacons rushed past in the opposite direction. The manu-drives had absolute priority on the road, and all the autotraffic drew out of the way and stopped whilst the manually-controlled cars went past.
Manalone speculated as to whether the emergency override of the automatic traffic was controlled by the central computer or whether there was a local response mechanism built into the autotraffic vehicles themselves. Local response seemed the more probable, because the speed and direction of the passenger-controlled vehicles could not be known to the computer in advance. This presupposed that the manu-drives broadcast some sort of command signal which triggered the emergency over-ride. Whether this signal was a radio transmission or whether it was associated with the sirens or the flashing lights, he was unable to decide. In any case the question became largely academic as his autram resumed its normal route and began to bear him back towards his home.
‘A handful of answers in exchange for a headful of new questions. Whether or not it was a profitable exchange depends on what you get for answers. The information is that there’s a panic on to save the human race from the backlash of an experiment that failed. But what the experiment was initially designed to do, hasn’t yet been said. Nor how much of its purpose it achieved before it ran away.
‘More to
the point, Manalone, why did Shears bother to tell you all this – and how does one qualify for exclusion from the human race? Moreover, how do you get readmitted if you don’t happen to like being on the outside? The answers seem to be associated with the “test” – but a test for what, by whom, and to what end, nobody’s prepared to say. In the face of apparent disaster, why the hell stop and play games?’
As he had predicted,
the autram set him down at the far end of his own road. The distance was welcome because it gave him the freedom to approach his house with caution and not to be delivered by the autram directly into a trap if the police or the MIPS were waiting. He was now certain that Shears would have him shot or arrested because of his computer deposition. The only reason he dared take the risk of approaching his house at this time was because he needed some of the cash which Maurine had brought, in order to move around without the surveillance of the ComCredit system.
His caution was justified. A cluster of bright yellow manu-drives in the vicinity of the house warned him that a police raid-squad had already arrived. Uncertain of police reactions once they found he was not at home, Manalone circled warily around the district and stationed himself at a convenient corner from which he could observe with a minimum chance of himself being seen.
The police were removing items from his house – the contents of his filming and microfilm cabinets as far as he could tell. Other policemen formed a guard around the house. Sandra was standing by the door, offering neither assistance nor protest. She was dressed more gloriously than ever, and laughed frequently at remarks made by the police. The trouble that had caught up with her husband seemed of no great concern to her.
Occasionally one of the police cars would leave the house and cruise around the district as though looking for him. Noticing they always took the same route, Manalone was able to avoid them fairly easily by retreating down a short access path and waiting until they had passed. It was while he was thus out of view that the autram arrived.
He failed to notice it when he first resumed his observation point. Only the rapid emergence of Sandra drew his attention to it. His first impression was that the police were taking her into custody, but when he discerned that the vehicle was automatic he knew instead that she was carrying out her threat … Sandra was leaving him.
Someone was helping her,
carrying cases and packages from the house to the autram. Although the figure of her helper was vaguely familiar, Manalone was unable to place it immediately. Sandra’s removal of goods from the household continued until it seemed inconceivable that a single autram could contain it and still leave room for passengers. Finally she must have decided that she had taken all of the most valuable things she could pack into an autram, and she waved cheerfully to the police as she departed carrying one final case. Manalone’s interest was momentarily diverted from her companion to the case itself. Lovingly, under her pretty little arm, Sandra was walking out with his six months’ salary in cash.
The loss of that particular sum of money was not something which would normally have worried Manalone immediately. But the fact that she had taken his precious cash amongst the pickings of the household, rankled as keenly as the sense of betrayal he felt at her leaving. It also left Manalone with an immediate problem. He could obtain more cash from his bank in town if he could travel there, but he could not travel to the bank unless he used his ComCredit card. Whilst he was still turning this matter over in his mind, the autram drew away from the house and began to proceed in his direction.
Leaning hard against a wall, he watched it come, burning with curiosity to learn the identity of Sandra’s lover. He needed only a single glance at the triumphant bull-moose face to have the question answered completely. Sandra had gone off with Victor Blackman, and probably gone too was Manalone’s chance of working for Blackman. The bottom of his world was beginning to fall away.
‘You can’t blame her, Manalone. Her world’s built around the spending of money in the same way your world’s built around … whatever it is it’s built around. She’s a chancer and Blackman’s a chancer, so it’s likely to be a hot and not very lasting relationship. But it raises one fundamental question. Boy … where the hell do you go from here?’