Authors: Lawrence Sanders
“Where the hell’s the bottom line?” I said.
“On the bottom. What’s the matter, teacher?” he jeered. “Can’t keep up?”
I forgave talent anything, including distended egos. I scanned the printout again. Again. Finally I computed the meaning.
It was exciting, but I wouldn’t let him see my pleasure. In brief, what Leo’s team had done was to stabilize the deterioration rate of Fred’s brain. They hadn’t yet halted the natural stopping of brain cells and loss of electrical power. But they had firmed the
rate
of decline. A small step, but an important one.
“Not bad,” I acknowledged. “But a breakthrough it ain’t.” “Don’t jerk me.” Leo grinned. “It’s great and you know it.” “What are you using?”
“You’ll never guess.”
“That’s why I’m asking.”
“Ergotamine.”
My astonishment drew a burst of laughter from him. But he didn’t know the cause of my reaction. Ergotamine is an alkaloid of
ergot, with a chemical structure similar to that of lysergic acid, a hallucinogen. Marvelous. Everything was going my way.
“Excellent,” I said.
“Nervy thinking. Stick with it.”
“Of course,” he
said. “Increasing the dosage. I’ll have Fred’s
deterioration
ended in a month.”
“Leo,” I said, “if you’re ever wrong, may I be the first to know?”
He laughed again, made a rude gesture, grabbed up his computer printout, waddled out of the office. He was an obese young em. But no fat around his brain.
Maya Leighton came into my apartment wearing a floor-length plastilap cloak in kelly green and an enormous tooty nosering of braided elephant hair. As usual, there was about her an aura of febrile expectancy. From my conditioning at the Science Academy I suddenly remembered an obso medical term: thyrotoxicosis. But perhaps I was playing doctor.
I took the cloak from her shoulders. She was wearing an em’s shirt, the tails rolled up and knotted beneath her gourdish breasts. There was a wide span of naked torso. Smooth, tanned. A large umbilicus with a protruding yolk stalk, a little tongue. Beneath were rough pants, belted low on the pelvis. Wisps of pubic hair sprouted like sprigs of parsley. Between heavy bosom and wide hips, that incredibly slender waist.
“We’re going to Alexandria on Friday,” I said. “You and I. To the Hospice. I want to take a look at Lewisohn.”
“All right,” she said equably. “That will be nice. Can we drive?”
“Good idea. We’ll start early. Take our time. Do you drive?” “Oh, yes! May I? Part of the way, at least?”
“Of course. We’ll stop for lunch along the way.”
“A picnic lunch.”
“Or at some amusing roadside restaurant.”
“Maybe near a lake or river.”
“We’ll eat outside. With wine.”
“We’ll throw crusts to the swans.”
We both laughed. I leaned to tongue her breasts.
As usual, Maya was eagerly complaisant, almost perversely so. Mastery excited me. I felt no sadistic tendencies, but still. . . .
We showered together, tissues raw and swollen. I mentioned, as casually as I could, that after the Alexandria visit, we would go into
Washington where I had a dinner engagement.
“But you won’t be left alone,” I told her. “We’ll stay at DIROB’s apartment.”
“All right.”
‘ ‘Her Chief of Security will take care of you, ” I said. “ His name is Art Roach.”
“All right.”
“He has a bad reputation.”
“Bad?”
“He’s a rough em. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Will you be careful?”
She laughed and presented her great soaped ass to me.
I had a two-hour conference with Frank and Frances von Liszt and their top attorneys of the Division of Law & Enforcement. It was a relaxed, unstructured meeting. I had convened it to discuss progress in an ongoing project to write an addendum to the Fertility Control Act. When completed, the proposed law would be submitted to Congress for debate and, I hoped, legislation.
The new law would require compulsory sterilization of habitual criminals, the feebleminded, insane, drug addicts, chronic alcoholics, and those suffering from incurable genetic disorders and/or abnormal sexuality.
I felt very strongly on the need for such a law. You must realize that the service of DIVRAD fell into two time-frames. We were seeking to prevent mental retardation and physical disorders by genetic engineering; i.e., we were trying to improve the quality of the gene pool of the future.
Simultaneously, we were seeking to cure living victims of those same disorders, and thus improve the quality of life in the present. Sometimes, happily, a discovery in one time frame also proved efficacious in the other. More frequently, our successes in genetic engineering far surpassed our victories in the treatment of existing victims. Hence the need for compulsory sterilization.
I wanted to present a proposed law as logical and complete as possible. As usual when dealing with subjects as sensitive as this—a law that limited personal liberty for the public good—the main difficulty was precise definition of terms. What was insanity? Feeblemindedness? Abnormal sexuality?
Source material covered the long conference table. With as many
opinions as sources. No consensus. I could see the von Liszts and their staff were bewildered and disheartened by this mass of conflicting views.
“Look,” I told them. “You’re getting bogged down in a quicksand. Don’t consult any more authorities. Don’t scan any more learned papers or listen to distinguished scientists and scholars. You have quite enough here to assimilate.”
“But it’s so contradictory,” Frances burst out. “Nick, we just can’t reconcile all these viewpoints.”
“Impossible.” Her brother nodded. “And not only disagreement on definitions of the physical and mental disorders warranting sterilization, but also a zillion objections to such a program on religious, ethical, and political grounds.”
“Now you’re getting into value judgments,” I warned him. “In an area where there are no universal values. We cannot let ourselves become involved in a moral debate. It would go on forever, never be settled, and nothing would be accomplished. Somehow we have to create a situation in which we are above such a debate—or beyond it. A situation in which opposition is, if not hopeless, at least ineffectual.”
“And how do we do that?” one of the attorneys demanded. “You’re asking for guaranteed success.”
“No,” I said. “Just better odds than we have now. All right— give me a minute and then I’ll throw you some raw meat.”
They quieted, lighted up their Bolds, whispered softly to each other. I sat where I was, at the head of the table, looking with some distaste at the mounds of research. A lot of thoughts there. Ideas. Theories. Kaka. If I let it, science would be pushed back to the four elements, demonology, dowsing, and belief in the soul.
“All right,” I said loudly. “Here’s what we do.”
Heads snapped up. They looked at me expectantly.
“For some time I haven’t been satisfied with the Genetic Rating program. It was originally established under the Fertility Control Act to be exactly what its title indicates: classification of objects by genetic quality. The big error was to assign to human examiners the authority to determine Genetic Ratings. There are good GE’s and there are bad ones. But all suffer from one defect: They are human. It was inevitable that subjective judgments would be made. The entire Genetic Rating program should have been computerized from the start."
"That will be our first step. The switch to computerization can be made by administrative decree without enabling legislation. I anticipate very little opposition. As a matter of fact, I think the move will draw general approval. You’ve all heard the stories of bribery of GE’s, and other rumors as to how they are influenced by personal and political considerations. The main opposition will come from the GE’s themselves when they learn they’re being replaced by a King Mk. V. But there aren’t enough GE’s to cause a major flap, and they’ll be assured of transfer to other services with a rank-rate equal to or more than their present love."
“Now I want you to work very closely with Data and Statistics in planning the programming for determining Genetic Ratings. Make certain that minus-ratings of sufficient weight are given for precisely those disorders for which we will eventually require sterilization.”
A gasp ran around the room. They turned to look at one another. They understood now what I was planning.
“Once computerized Genetic Ratings are operational—we should be able to do it in a year, at most—the Sterilization Addendum will then be submitted to Congress. We’ll have to give it an attractive title—like the Gene Pool Improvement Act, or something like that. It will be based solely on Genetic Ratings. The opposition will then find no human objects to debate. You can’t argue with mechanical thinking. Having already accepted computerized Genetic Ratings, they’ll find it difficult to object to the use of those ratings to improve the quality of life today and the quality of the gene pool tomorrow. I don’t say they’ll be completely silenced. Of course, they won’t be. But we’ll have broken their teeth. I think we can win this one, and the plan I have outlined is exactly how we’ll do' it. Any questions?”
There were no questions.
Phoebe Huntzinger returned from the Denver Field Office. She marched into my office. Her usual placidity was not evident. She was disturbed and trying to control it.
“Phoebe,” I said, “how was the trip?”
“The trip? Fine. I like it out there. Would you believe they still have snow up in the mountains?”
“I believe. You like the objects?”
“At the FO? Some good brains there, Nick.”
“I know. So what’s the problem?”
She tried to laugh. “It shows?”
“It shows. A crisis at Denver?”
“Not so much a crisis as just plain, everyday, run-of-the-mill stupidity.”
“Can it be glossed?”
“What? Oh, sure, Nick. It can be handled.”
“All right. Then there’s no crisis. Now what is it?”
“Do you know how they’re running this game?”
“On this particular project? Roughly. Nine laser beams pick up the CNS electrical activity. They scan in overlapping disks, like radar beams. Right so far?”
“Right.”
“Electric synapses show on screen and at the same time the bedside computer determines location, duration, and strength of the cerebral signal. That information is amplified and fed into the master computer for translation into printout. From a trigger in the brain, we get an actual word in type. Correct?”
“Correct. Pretty good for an old em like you. Is there
anything
going on in this Section you don’t know?”
“Cut the kaka. What’s the problem?”
“You’re hoping for a conception from the experimental object. A complete declarative sentence. Nick?”
“Yes.”
“Impossible.”
“Why impossible?”
“What do you think is the vocabulary of the master computer? How many signals is it programmed to accept and translate into words?”
“Oh . I don’t know. Three thousand? Five thousand?” “Two hundred.”
“You’re joking?”
“I’m not. That computer can never give you a conception, Nick. It only knows two hundred words, and almost all of them are adjectives and adverbs. Few verbs. No pronouns. It’s great for picking up sensations and emotions. Hot. Pink. Green. Soft. Blue. Happy. Red. But a complete conception? Forget it. Unless your idea of a declarative sentence is: ‘Sad red warm hurt cold loud.’ ”
I got up, moved to the window, stared out into murky sky. I tried to control my anger. I knew there were two factors that negated the best efforts of the best futurists: human genius and human stupidity. You could construct the greatest mathematical model in the world, but all your agonized planning could be brought to dust by a
leukemic dwarf creating a new idea in a hospice bed or by a stupid scientist who neglected an experimental element so basic that no one thought to question it.
I turned to face Phoebe Huntzinger. I tried to smile. She tried. We both failed.
“Not fatal,” I said. “Peter Stanley?”
“The Team Leader? Yes, Nick. That’s his name.”
“I’ll take care of him. Phoebe, does this project interest you?”
“Yes. Very much. Let me serve on it, Nick. The things I do around here are routine. My Division runs itself. You know that.”
“All right. That master computer in Denver—a Golem?”
“Mk. III.”
“What’s the storage potential?”
“Vocabulary? Maybe ten thousand words tops, on the basis of input from the bedside computer.”
“Flash WISSEC. They’ve got basic vocabulary lists from five words to fifty thousand. Ask for copies of one, three, five, and ten thousand words. Program Golem to its limit. Got that?” “Sure.”
“What about the in-brain technology? Any chance of a foul-up there?”
“I don’t know, Nick. It’s not my field.”
I nodded. “I’ll take care of it. As soon as you get your word lists, get back to Denver and start the reprogramming. Thanks, Phoebe. ’ ’ She smiled warmly at me.
“Nick, if I wasn’t married, I’d suggest you and I use each other. One night at least.”
“Why not?” I said. “Your wife won’t mind. By the way, Phoebe, that Denver project never has been named. I’ve been carrying it on the budget under Gerontology Research. I think we’ll bring it out of the closet now and give it a name. Make the servers feel they’re on something important. We’ll call it Project Phoenix. ” “Whatever you say, Nick.”
Paul Bumford returned from the San Diego Field Office on Thursday morning. He flashed my office to report in. On screen, he appeared thin, hard, drawn.
“Tired?” I asked him.
“Busted my ass,” he said. But he was not grumbling. If anything, he seemed proud of his labors, confident of his mastery of his new power.
“How did you resolve the Chimerism debate?” I asked him.
“I told them I would phase out the transplant program and provide more love for genetic manipulation. Nick?”
“Excellent. Good judgment.”
“I passed the test? Thanks, teacher.”