The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) (32 page)

Understandably, Endless became something of a recluse after that episode. He locked himself away from the real world and immersed himself in the cyber world. It became his métier, his passion, and his natural environment. Every new wave of development in computing and information technology and old Endless was right there surfing on the crest, ahead of the pack. When genetic engineering began to emerge, Endless plunged into it with the fervor of a dervish, driven by the tantalizing belief that it would one day be possible to rebuild his bell-end.

He moved to Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and started his own company: Woonsocket American Nuclear Gene Technology. His innovations started attracting attention, and his reputation as a rising star drew some top talent from the universities, and pretty soon he had gone from small potatoes to titan of tubers.

Momo Bibbs, out of Berkeley, was an example of the kind of megawatt sconce power that was drawn to the intellectual gravitational field generated by W.A.N.G Tech. Momo could have walked into any of the top legal outfits in the country, but he chose to hook up with Endless and handle his patents. It was a smart move. By the time he was thirty-six, his stock options were worth a quarter of a billion, and he could watch the rich and famous fluttering up and down in their yachts from the bay windows of his villa on Bailey’s Beach. Not bad for a skinny kid whose parents were second-generation immigrant Afar people from Djibouti.

Endless was extremely well endowed in the brains department, if, unfortunately, no longer in other ways, but compared to Sebastian Type he was a simpleton. Sebastian Type had an IQ that was off the clock. His article in
Science
, published when he was just seventeen years old, on
the theoretical existence of subatomic constructs in dark matter which conform to expectations proposed by Fibonacci’s progression,
drew a standing ovation from everybody in the scientific community that that could understand it. All three of them.

Like Momo, Sebastian could have waltzed into a top gig at any research lab in the land, but he chose the Head of Research chair at W.A.N.G., with his own agenda, continually updated state-of-the-art lab tech, and as much blow as he could handle. Before his fortieth birthday, he was accumulating spondulicks so fast that even he had trouble calculating how much he was worth.

And there the three of them were, sitting in mouse-pussy-smooth kid leather seats on a Learjet 85, thirty thousand feet above the Volga River, staring out at the clouds through marijuana clouds of their own making, on their way to Moscow to conclude a deal that, if all went according to plan, would make the billions that they were collectively worth seem like chump change.

Brains beats brawn, as they say. And, most of the time, it’s true. Except, as every entrepreneur knows, occasionally some brains need to be kicked out, which is when brawn is required. So, to the high-octane, intellectual cornucopia of skull power cubed to the power of ten wielded by Endless, Momo, and Sebastian, was added some weaponry wielded by a cerebrally limited but skilled, vicious, ruthless, and easily manipulated ex-military gunslinger—not to mention the none-too-responsible but still proud father of old school buddy Cups Hicks—the celebrated and decorated Huckleberry Sawyer Hicks, esquire, kick-ass assassin…just in case equations and cosines didn’t cut the mustard, and some knuckle sandwiches had to be dealt out, or some troubleshooting was called for that required real shooting.

As Endless gazed out of the window at the beguiling configuration of stars, believing that if he only had enough time he could decipher the encrypted stellar message once and for all, and not even thinking for one nanosecond to appreciate them for their integral beauty, he was confident of the fact that, as forbidding as the reputation of his putative business partner was, while there might be the occasional thorn among the roses, the prospective negotiation and conclusion of the business at hand would be a tiptoe through the tulips.

It was the other team he was worried about. The so-called “good guys.” Endless did not have many friends, but his money had plenty, and some of the high-and-mighty guardians of the common good were prepared to shit on the common and the good from a great height if they could see some green attached to it. Which was how he got tipped off that the bloodhounds were already on the trail. He even got the names of the hounds. Well, he knew where the best place to be was: right next to the fucking dog. Which is why he had his own mutt already in place, with his ear to the ground and his nose to the wind, ready to piss on all the wrong trees, howl at the wrong moon, and bite any bastard that tried to get ahold of the bone.

***

Monsoon was certain that he had come to a crossroads in his life. That was because when they pushed him off the back of the truck, he landed in the middle of an intersection. Still, he had a few reasons to count himself lucky. For one, the chauffeur had been polite enough to slow down to about twenty before they heaved him over the tailgate, so he was only winded, with a few minor scrapes and contusions. For another, the crossroads was so remote, and the hour so late, there was no other traffic, so he didn’t need to worry about getting splattered by a passing truck before he could make the side of the road. Plus he still had some cash, his ID, and his passport.

He had Hyatt to thank for the latter. Or maybe Ace. To Zalupa, Monsoon was just a byproduct, an inconvenience to be disposed of once he had served his purpose. But Hyatt was seemingly possessed of a certain tenderness of heart and sense of gratitude that was not evident in his uncle, and he had interceded. So Monsoon’s sentence was commuted from bullet in the back of the head and pitched naked off the Borodinsky Bridge into the icy Moskva, to pitched fully clothed off the back of a moving Skoda twin cab, on a deserted backwoods back road, about a hundred miles outside of Moscow, at three o’clock in the morning.

Monsoon picked himself up and limped to the side of the road. There was not a light in sight, but at least there was a full moon glowing intermittently through the dark scudding clouds. Standing there in the moonlight, pondering each road in turn as it faded from pale gold to black, disappeared into darkness, and then was irradiated again in golden lunar mystery, he felt like Dorothy.

“
There’s never a fucking wizard when you need one,” he said aloud, hoping the sound of his own voice would serve to banish the chill that was beginning to creep into his bones and into his heart. He looked at the pale silver snow banked up on either side of the road, and watched his frosted, moon-tinged breath linger and vanish.

“
Well, at least there aren’t any fucking wolves.”

That was when he heard the first howl.

***

Fanny had tears rolling down her cheeks, and her stomach muscles were aching. After the fashion of many intelligent people, she had asked herself why, as she got older, she didn’t laugh as much as she used to. Helpless, out of control, rolling-about mirth. It just didn’t happen to her like it used to. But it was happening now, in spades.

Khuy was out doing whatever it was that evil Russian renegades do in the early hours of the morning in Moscow’s writhing, steamy viscera. Fanny couldn’t sleep, so she’d turned on the TV. Russian reality shows and ice hockey weren’t her thing, so she grabbed the R3 from where Khuy had it stashed—in his underwear drawer, of all places. Usually, that was the first place a burglar would look, but in Khuy’s case, the goods were pretty safe.

It didn’t take much to figure out how it worked, and she fiddled about, amusing herself for a while until she had an idea. As someone with an appreciation for the written word and the performing arts, she was pretty much
au fait
with what was going on in the movie industry. So she decided to take the Best Actor and Actress Oscar winners from the last ten years, and swap them, and see what happened.

What happened was she pissed in her knickers.

***

Sebastian and Hyatt were not especially worried about anybody listening in on their conversation. There is an old man in Australia, an Aboriginal, and the poor bastard is the last surviving member of his linguistic group, meaning the only person who can understand what he is talking about, is him.

Sebastian and Hyatt were in a similar position, the difference being that Sebastian and Hyatt were the first people in their linguistic group. They were talking the language of the future. But just because two people speak the same language doesn’t mean they agree.

“
No, man!” Hyatt said. “You don’t get it. It’s free division of multiple complex systems, which leads to impeccable radiative enhancement, which suppresses the system initiative toward aggressive growth. The polonium is a one-off. It’s fuck-all. It’s just a fucking switch, man. The match that lights the fire.”

“
I’m afraid I have to disagree,” said Sebastian. “What will happen is symbiotic multiple organic duplication of source material. The Chameleon Fallacy.”

“
What did you say? Where did you hear that?”

“
Hear what?”

“
The Chameleon Fallacy?”

“
I didn’t hear it. I formulated it.”

“
You what?”

“
I invented it. The Chameleon Fallacy. Mimicry is the basic survival principle. Pretense. Lies. Ambiguity. Prevarication. Fundamental to the human experience and fundamental to life on the planet. Deception is the engine that drives evolution. Disguise. Nobody eats themselves—except people. The meme will replicate the original in its entirety, albeit ameliorated and to a much lesser degree. The children will eventually be as toxic as the parent.”

“
Yeah, but that won’t matter. The Ephemeral Principle will dictate that the meme cannot survive longer than a week.”

“
No, man. The Imperative to Life Principle will assume priority. It will survive and replicate. It will be a slow, sleeping death to anybody exposed to it. Our plan was to market this as a cell phone application. Three billion satisfied customers. But what we would be selling would be cancer, Alzheimer’s, and tumors. There’s no way, pal; it will…wait a fucking minute! You were going to try to sell us something that you knew, or thought you knew, would self-destruct in a week? A trifle unethical, don’t you think?”

Hyatt stood and walked over to the window. He stood motionless as if in deep consideration of some profound calculation of substance and merit. He turned to face Type.

“
Sebastian,” he said, “I truly regret this. I honestly never expected to encounter a mind more powerful than my own, and yet I have. This will be a double loss.”

“
What the fuck are you talking about?”

“
I mean to me, as a soul mate, and to the scientific community in general. Maybe even to humanity itself.”

“
I’m afraid I’m not following the logic.”

“
Well, who knows what exquisite flowers may have grown in such rare earth?”

“
Well, Hyatt. If we’re going to get earthy, I have to say you are talking out of your
aaargh
!”

Hyatt was right. Perhaps the salvation of us all hovered in the twittering synapses of Sebastian Type’s brain. But we would never know, because as he stood up to go and make his report to Endless Lee, some fat troglodyte who was barely able to spell his own name sent a full metal jacket projectile at 5000 ft/s crashing though that magnificent brain and turned it into pig slops.

***

Most people misquoted Rudyard Kipling. They knew the bit about east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet. But most people don’t know what comes next:

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth

When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

Thus did Bjorn Eggen Christiansson and Birring Barga, a.k.a. Woolloomooloo Wally, both ninety years old and change, come to be sitting in a small house in Norway, one hundred yards above the Arctic Circle, in front of a roaring log fire, drinking aquavit and beer, listening to ABBA, and laughing their tits off.

“
This is fucken ripper, Bjorn Eggen. What’s in it?”

“
Dill.”

“
Who you callin’ a dill, ya bludger?”