Novahead (16 page)

The play of light and shadow over his ignorance wasn
'
t very
entertaining
, but so far it seemed he believed what he was saying.

‘
A society stemming from these principles will demand more from its people than they can give.
'

‘
Nonsense. Each crucible of cowardice is taxed according to its compliance. And it
'
s a good ferment for discipline. Vulgarity ties the doubtful to the state
'
s crimes - that and the social contract, a deal made on unequal terms. Stagnation as policy - a surrogate freedom, carefully posed. Admittedly it was a society that operated well but was so finely balanced it left no room for error.
'

I interrupted before anything more could emerge from the pale valve he had for a mouth.
‘
You
'
re stalling for time,
'
I said.
‘
Why?
'

‘
There
'
s a schedule,
'
he said, with an almost coy smile. After a moment
'
s reflection, he continued. I think he
'
d forgotten the gun.
‘
As a protection at street level the law is a rumour, a phantom - ghostly until invoked, and invoked only after the harm has been done. Well, you know all this. It cuts off the tail, not realising where the heart and brain are located.
'

‘
In the cautious man, they
'
re in the tail.
'

‘
That
'
s not quite what I meant. In any case, to write a law is much easier to do than explain what you mean by it. That
'
s part of what it
'
s for. I experimented with explaining and found I need give a reason convincing only to the simple-minded. Selling jargon as fact. Well, pretty soon lawyers outnumbered people by two to one. By this time a hundred-weight of hokum was being transferred into statute every day. Humanity, the eternally narrowing mind. I
'
m proud to have been present at that supreme moment when everything was illegal at last. Law was perfected - on paper, anyway. It was strange, that day. An eclipse clicked into place like an optician
'
s test lens.
'

‘
I remember that eclipse.
'

I had been walking through a field with an antique Walther P38 in my right hand. It stung as if stuck to my hand by the blowback. Then the gun and everything else chilled. That German pistol unglued from my palm as though what I had just done was no longer my responsibility. I felt insulted, resentful. Looking back and to the left, I watched the whispering field darken as the sun closed out. I was seventeen.

‘
Was that the day, then?
'

‘
I don
'
t believe nature was aware of what had been done, but it was a hard coincidence.
'

‘
Got bone-cold for a while.
'

‘
The Project of the Law was completed the only way it could be. The only way the clear-eyed had ever foreseen.
'

Through a yard of pain I focused on Pivot. It was like making eye-contact with a hen.

‘
Maybe we should empty our minds and meditate on a simple image such as a geranium.
'

His silver eyebrows rose as slowly and steadily as the mercury in a thermometer.
‘
You are deceiving no-one, Atom.
'

‘
Damn right.
'

‘
Tell me then - do you believe in the hour of inferno? The end of civilization?
'

‘
I can
'
t imagine why anyone would believe otherwise.
'

‘
Dull though you are, I don
'
t believe you can
'
t imagine that.
'

‘
How about you?
'

‘
I believe it alright. Ract, Darkwards and myself have an intricate and friendly rivalry of long standing. We all three had invested in a few wildcat nerve gas stocks, and it struck us all at once that menacing a foreign country is ideal, whether it
'
s baffled, ready or both. To wax profit from catastrophe. Once you
'
ve made a beginning, the rest generally follows on its own. We
'
d wager on outcomes, too. But that gets boring, and we could see where things were going. Ract and Darkwards don
'
t have my intuition - they use a little gizmo, a fissure shunt that probes the etheric gap and extrapolates its progress. Fissure science - which isn
'
t really prediction. Most things are obvious, really. So-called
“
prophecy
”
is easy. Optimism is the chief thing that prevents it. People can barely see the present because of that, let alone the future. And I know the medievalists determined the end of everything at 19,683 but nobody believes we
'
ll last that long. The only variable is the method.
'

Pivot was hauling several unseen planes of motivation with him like aerials, but he was unaware of them. They were notes he
'
d pinned to his own back. He had succumbed to the complexities of his own evasions, writhing inward like a spiral. It would be a challenge to bullseye the golden section of artifice.

‘
What else to do? The murder of civilization is not even a very interesting spectacle. We see the future as a box of accidents - a terrible thing - intrusions ready to be let loose. Darkwards foresees a comet - or asteroid, I forget which. Ract finally settled on the CERN loop, cliche though it is. I can
'
t believe in Darkwards
'
s impending visitor. Honestly, a comet? Why accuse minerals of fate? I confidently predicted some pretty large floods. Eels and economics make strange bedfellows and my other speculations soon seemed fatuous.
'

I was sure he didn
'
t feel the reality of the enterprise, a state allowed by his belief that most facts were mere guests.
‘
Volcanoes aren
'
t done for practice, you nimrod. You
'
d put fruit on a chain, wouldn
'
t you?
'

Pivot frowned.
‘
Let me pay you the courtesy of being blunt - we live in the World to End All Worlds. Earth connects little pains, and the last few connections are being made. Let
'
s think big. The kid - Partenheimer. I heard about him before the others. I thought
“
Let me not repeat the sins of my forefathers, but innovate.
”
So I bet on the kid. I couldn
'
t leave this match of Jericho lying around. But a thing like that, there was a fierce temptation to interfere with the unfortunate creature to influence the outcome. I include myself in this. Have you guessed the odds? What, honestly, are the chances of Partenheimer ever stumbling upon an original idea, even in this city? I realised that rather quickly. So how big do I win if I force it?
'

‘
Why win a bet that
'
ll kill you?
'

Pivot seemed despondent at having but one mouth with which to sigh.
‘
Why
lose
one that
'
ll kill you? There
'
s a theory I don
'
t believe, that gamblers want the worst to happen, a covert suicide. But every habit started with nature. Addiction is basically anything you can
'
t stop doing.
'

‘
Breathing?
'

‘
And any addiction can be ended. Life itself is a tolerated defeat. Our greatest enemy in ourselves is the wish to be alive, though in others it has worked in our favour as a handle with which to manipulate. The point is this planet
'
s circling the drain, so ofcourse we opened a book on it. We met amid the shuffling of taxation, war and other forms of speculation but those dabblings in the unseen are completely over now, since the economy went the way of all flesh. I
'
ve got money orbiting the globe in five marked satellite accounts and it
'
s all worthless, dead. There are no commercial vices anymore, not really. But operationally, the habit remains. You think things can ever be twisted into a neat little bundle and disposed of? Things are messy.
'

‘
Someone else told me that recently.
'

‘
You know that story about Charles Jamison in Atlanta, who disposed of all those invading his home?
'

‘
Everyone knows that story.
'

‘
Well, remember toward the end, the people going in knew they were never coming out. You
'
ve seen an animal die, Atom. You can see from its eyes, near the end, that it knows it
'
s dying. There
'
s an acceptance, finally. Well, here we are. At the acceptance. A prosperous doom is all we demand of the immediate future. That apocaleptic young man I have in my wine cellar - that
'
s the doom I favour. A win is just the icing on the coffin. There. Now you know everything about me.
'

‘
I don
'
t buy it. I
'
ve looked at the kid. His etheric
'
s like Hawking radiation, carrying no information.
'

‘
I
'
ll take that gamble. Do you know the blast radius on him?
'

‘
But hardly the end of everything.
'

‘
Really. No chain reaction then, all those heads? You
'
re a scientist now? When you connected with the kid we resolved to keep you under observation, a task which alarmed and exhausted us more than we could have expected.
'

‘
That hitman of yours,
'
I said, meaning the galoot,
‘
he wasn
'
t any good. He
'
s dead now.
'

‘
I know it,
'
he said sadly, and that
'
s all.

‘
I predicted the collapse ten years ago. It
'
s on record. I don
'
t see why my involvement now would make any difference.
'

‘
Yes, there would seem no reason not to kill you at once, what do you think?
'

‘
I agree.
'

‘
But I
'
m not going to do that,
'
he said with a quiet, careful quality.
‘
No, I
'
m going to lock you in with the mooncow and see how you get along. I might even leave you there and wait on the other side of town.
'
He handed it over like there was a bomb at the centre of the answer.

‘
What do you expect me to do?
'

‘
Whatever comes to mind. Something original, even.
'

The setup was iterating an infinite array of new edges as I looked at it.

‘
Until something happens,
'
he went on with a bland expression.
‘
The world can be decided in the middle of a moment where an insect stops. Just like that - generation dismissed.
'

I was disgusted.
‘
What good are you, really?
'

‘
Oh, come on. Can you really mourn the passing of this country, its pea-sized minds and planet-sized children? One half of the truth is that humanity is inescapably and demonically evil. The other half doesn
'
t bear thinking about.
'