Man Plus Page 6

  The balance teams then declared themselves satisfied, but Jerry Weidner was not. The dizziness had happened before, and it had never been satisfactorily tracked down, either to the built-in mechanical horizon or to the crude natural stirrup-andanvil bones in his ear. Weidner did not know that it stemmed from the mediation system that was his own special responsibility, but he didn't know that it did not, either. He wished Brad would get the hell back from his long lunch.

  At that time, halfway around the world, there were these two Chinese named Sing and Sun. They were not characters in a dirty joke. Those were their names. Sing's great-grandfather had died at the mouth of a Russian cannon after the failure of the Righteous Harmony Fists to expel the white devils from China. His father had conceived him on the Long March, and died before he was born, in combat against the soldiers of a war lord allied to Chiang Kai-shek. Sing himself was nearly ninety years old. He had shaken the hand of Comrade Mao, had diverted the Yellow River for Mao's successors and was now supervising the greatest hydraulic engineering project of his career in an Australian town called Fitzroy Crossing. It was his first prolonged trip outside the territory of New People's Asia. He had three ambitions for it: to see an uncensored pornographic film, to drink a bottle of Scotch that came from Scotland rather than the People's Province of Honshu, and to taste a pizza. With his colleague Sun he had made a good start on the Scotch, had found out where to accomplish the viewing of the film and was now desirous of tasting the pizza.

  Sun was much younger—not yet forty—and in spite of everything, suffering from respect for his associate's age. There was also the fact that Sun was several echelons lower in social status than the older man, although he was obviously a coming man in the techno-industrial wing of the Party. Sun had just returned from a year of leading a mapping team through all of the Great Sandy Desert. It was not only sand. It was soil—good, arable, productive soil—lacking only a few trace elements and water. What Sun had mapped had been the soil chemistry of a million square miles. When Sun's soil map and Sing's great uphill aqueduct, with its fourteen great batteries of nucleardriven pumps, came together, they would equal a new kind of life for those million miles of desert. Chemical supplements + sun-distilled water from the distant seacoast = ten crops a year with which to feed a hundred million ethnically Chinese New Australians.

  The project had been carefully studied and contained only one flaw. The Old New Australians, descendants of the populating drives of the post—World War II period, did not want New New Australians coming in to farm that land. They wanted it for themselves. As Sun and Sing entered Danny's Pizza Hut on Fitzroy Crossing's main street, two Old New Australians, one named Koschanko and one named Gradechek, were just leaving the bar, and unfortunately recognized Sing from his newspaper pictures. Words passed. The Chinese recognized the smell of stale beer and took the truculence to be only drink; they tried to pass, and Koschanko and Gradechek pushed them out of the street door. Bellicosity began swinging, and the ninety-year-old skull of Sing Hsi-chin split itself open against a curbstone.

  At this point Sun drew a pistol he was not authorized to be carrying, and shot the two assailants dead.

  It was only a drunken brawl. The police of Fitzroy Crossing had handled thousands of more dramatic crimes, and could have handled this one if they had been allowed to. But it did not stop there, because one of the barmaids was herself a New New Australian of Honanese extraction, recognized Sun, discovered who Sing was, picked up the phone and called the New China News Agency bureau in Lagrange Mission, down on the coast, to say that one of China's most famous scientists had been brutally murdered.

  Within ten minutes the satellite network had carried a factually shaky but very colorful version of the story all over the world.

  Before an hour was out, the New People's Asian mission to Canberra had requested an appointment with the Foreign Minister to deliver its protest, spontaneous demonstrations were in full blast in Shanghai, Saigon, Hiroshima and a dozen other NPA cities, and half a dozen observation satellites were being nudged out of their orbits to pass over Northwest Australia and the Sunda Islands seas. Two miles outside the harbor of Melbourne a great gray shape swam to the surface of the sea and floated there, offering no signals and responding to none for more than twenty minutes. Then it declared itself the NPA nuclear submarine The East Is Red on a routine diplomatic visit to a friendly port. The news was received in time to cancel the RAAF air strike that had been ordered against the unknown intruder, but only just.

  Under Pueblo, Colorado, the President of the United States was interrupted in his after-lunch nap. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, distastefully sipping a cup of black coffee, when the DOD liaison aide came in with a sitrep and the news that a condition red alert had been declared, in accordance with the prepared responses long since programmed into the North American Defense Command Net. He already had the satellite reports and an on-the-scene account from a military mission to Fitzroy Crossing; he knew about the appearance of the submarine The East Is Red, but did not yet know that the air strike had been called off. Summarizing the information, he said to the President, "So it's go or no-go, sir. NADCOM recommends a launch with abort options in fifty minutes."

  The President snarled, "I don't feel good. What the hell did they put in that soup?" Dash was not in a mood to think about China just at that moment; he had been dreaming about a private poll which showed his popularity down to 17 percent, including both the "excellent" and "satisfactory" ratings, with 61 percent calling his administration "poor" or "very unsatisfactory." It had not been a dream. That was what the morning's political briefing had shown him.

  He pushed the coffee cup away and glumly contemplated the decision he, alone in all the world, was now required to make. To launch missiles against the major cities of New People's Asia was in theory a reversible choice: they could be aborted at any time before reentry, defused, falling harmlessly into the sea. But in practice the NPA posts would detect the launch, and who knew what those crazy Chinese bastards would do? His belly felt as though he were in the last minutes of pregnancy, and there seemed to be a good chance that he would throw up. His number one secretary said chidingly, "Dr. Stassen did advise you not to eat any more cabbage, sir. Perhaps we should instruct the chef not to make that soup any more."

  The President said, "I don't want lectures right now. All right, look. We'll hold at the present state of readiness until further orders from me. No launch. No retaliation. Understood?"

  "Yes, sir," said the DOD man regretfully. "Sir? I have several specific queries, from NADCOM, from the Man Plus project, from the admiral commanding SWEPAC—"

  "You heard me! No retaliation. Everything else, keep going." His number one secretary clarified the point for him. "Our official position," he said, "is this affair in Australia is a domestic matter and not a national concern for the United States. Our action stance does not change. We keep all systems go, but take no action. Is that right, Mr. President?"

  "Right," said Dash thickly. "Now if you can get along without me for ten minutes, I got to go to the john."

  Brad did think of phoning in to see how the recalibration was going, but he really liked showering with a girl, with all the fun involved in soaping each other, and the Chero-Strip bathroom armorarium included bath oil beads, bubbles and marvelous thick towels. It was three o'clock before he decided to think about going back to work.

  By that time it was pretty much too late. Weidner had tried to get permission to postpone testing from the deputy director, who wouldn't do it on his own authority but bucked it to Washington, who queried the President's office and received the reply: "No, you cannot, positively cannot, repeat not, postpone this or any other test." The man giving the reply was the President's number one secretary, who was looking at the "risk of war" projection on the wall of the President's most private study while he spoke. Even as he was talking the broad black bar was bending itself still more steeply up toward the red line.

  So
they went ahead with the test, Weidner tight-lipped and frowning. It went well enough until it began to go very badly indeed. Roger Torraway's mind was far away until he heard the cyborg call him. He locked in and stood, in skin suit and breathing mask, on the ruddy sands. "What's the matter, Willy?" he demanded.

  The great ruby eyes turned toward him. "I—I can't ssssee you, Roger!" the cyborg shrilled. "I— I—"

  And he toppled and fell. It was as quick as that. Roger did not even move toward him until he felt a great thundering hammer of air beat in on him, sending him stumbling toward the recumbent monster form.

  From the 7,500-foot equivalent outside the Mars-normal chamber Don Kayman came desperately running in. He had not waited to lock. He had thrown both doors open. He was no longer a scientist. He was a priest; he dropped to his knees beside the contorted form of what had been Willy Hartnett.

  Roger stared while Don Kayman touched the ruby eyes, traced a cross on the synthetic flesh, whispering what Roger could not hear. He did not want to hear. He knew what was happening.

  The first candidate for cyborg was now receiving Extreme Unction in front of his eyes.

  The lead backup was Yic Freibart, taken off the list by presidential order.

  The number two alternate was Carl Mazzini, ruled out because of his broken leg.

  The third alternate, and the new champion, was him.

  Six

  Mortal in Mortal Fear

  It is not an easy thing for a flesh-and-blood human being to come to terms with the knowledge that some of his flesh is going to be ripped from him and replaced with steel, copper, silver, plastic, aluminum and glass. We could see that Torraway was not behaving very rationally. He went blundering down the hall away from the Mars-normal tank in great urgency, as though he had a most pressing errand. He had no errand except to get away. The hall seemed like a trap to him. He felt he could not stand to have one person come up to him and say he was sorry about Willy Hartnett, or acknowledge Torraway's own new status. He passed a men's room, stopped, looked around—no one was watching him—and entered to stand at the urinal, eyes glazed, fixed to the shiny chrome. When the door pushed open, Torraway made a great show of zipping and flushing, but it was only a boy from the typing poo1 who looked at him incuriously and headed for a booth.

  Outside the men's room the deputy director caught him. "Goddamn lousy thing," he said. "I guess you know you're—"

  "I know," said Torraway, pleased that his voice was so calm. "We're going to have to find out what happened fast. I'm having a meeting in my office in ninety minutes. We'll have the first autopsy reports. I want you there."

  Roger nodded, glanced at his wrist watch and turned smartly away. The important thing, he thought, was to keep moving as though he were too busy to interrupt. Unfortunately he couldn't think of a single thing he had to do, or even that he could pretend to be doing, to keep conversation away. No, he recognized, not conversation. It was thought he wanted to keep away, thinking about himself. He wasn't afraid. He wasn't furious at fate. He just wasn't prepared to look into the personal consequences of Willy Hartnett's death, not right at that moment—

  He looked up; someone had been calling his name.

  It was Jon Freeling, Brad's surgical assistant in perceptual systems, looking for Brad.

  "Why, no," said Torraway, glad to be talking about something other than Willy's death or his own future, "I don't know where he is. Went to lunch, I think."

  "Two hours ago. His tail's going to be in a crack if I can't find him before the DD's meeting. I'm not sure I can field all the questions—and I can't go looking for him, they're bringing the cyborg into my lab now, and I've got to—"

  "I'll find him for you," Torraway said hastily. "I'll call him at home."

  "Tried it. No dice. And he didn't leave a number where he could be reached."

  Torraway winked, suddenly feeling relieved, delighted to have a challenge he could respond to. "You know Brad," he said. "You have to remember there's a lot of tomcat in that boy. I'll find him." And he took the elevator to the administrative floor turned two corners and rapped on the door marked Administrative Statistics.

  The function of the people inside that door had very little to do with statistics. The door didn't open at once; instead, a spy-hole opened and a blue eye looked out at him. "I'm Colonel Torraway, and it's an emergency."

  "One moment," said a girl's voice; there was a sound of clattering and scraping, and then the door unlocked and she let Torraway in. There were four other people in the room, all of them in civilian clothes and looking rather undistinguished, as they were meant to do. Each had an old-fashioned rolltop desk, of a kind one did not usually expect to see in a modern space-agency office. The tops could be pulled down to conceal what was on the desks at a moment's notice; they were down now.

  "It's Dr. Alexander Bradley," Roger said. "He's needed urgently in about an hour and his department can't find him. Commander Hartnett is dead, and—"

  The girl said, "We know about Commander Hartnett. Do you want us to find Dr. Bradley for you?"

  "No, I'll do it. But I expect you can tell me where to start looking. I know you keep tabs on all of us, extracurricular activities and all." He did not actually wink at her too, but he heard the sound of a wink in his voice.

  The girl looked at him steadily for a moment. "He's probably at—"

  "Hold it," called the man at the desk behind her, his voice surprisingly angry.

  She shook her head, overruling him without looking at him. "Try the Chero-Strip Hover Hotel," she said. "He usually uses the name of Beckwith. I'd suggest you telephone. Maybe it would be better if we did it for you, at that—"

  "Oh, no," said Torraway easily, resolute to keep this chore for himself. "It's important I talk to him myself."

  The young man said strongly, "Dr. Torraway, I really suggest you let us handle—"

  But he was already backing out of the door, nodding, not listening any more. He had made up his mind not to bother telephoning but to drive to the motel; it was a valid reason to get out of the lab while he collected his thoughts.

  Outside the air-controlled laboratory buildings Tonka had been getting hotter and hotter. The sun penetrated even the tinted windshield, filling Torraway's car with heat that defied the cooling system. He drove inexpertly on manual, taking the curves so sloppily that the guidance wheels skidded. The motel was fifteen stories tall and solid glass; it seemed to aim the sunlight directly at him, like Archimedes's warriors defending Syracuse. He was glad to get out in the underground parking lot and take the moving stairs up to the lobby.

  The lobby itself was as tall as the building, completely enclosed, with the rooms racked around it and flying bridges and galleries crisscrossing overhead. The clerk had never heard of Dr. Alexander Bradley.

  "Try Beckwith," suggested Torraway, offering a bill. "He sometimes has trouble remembering his name."

  But it was no use, the clerk either couldn't place Brad or wouldn't. Roger drove out of the parking space, paused in the beat of the sunshine and considered what to do next. He stared unseeing into the reflecting pool that doubled as the motel's air-conditioning heat sink. Probably he should try phoning Brad at his apartment, he thought. Should have done it while he was in the lobby; he didn't much want to turn around and go back in. Or call from the car, for that matter; the car phone was broadcast radio, and the conversation would be better private. He could go home and call from there, he planned; it was not more than a five-minute run—

  At which point it first registered on Roger that he really ought to tell his wife what had happened.

  It was not a duty he looked forward to. Telling Dorrie unfortunately implied spelling it all out to himself. But Roger had a good attitude toward inevitable things, even if unpleasant, and keeping his mind in neutral, he turned the car toward home and Dorrie.

  Unfortunately Dorrie wasn't there.

  He called to her in the hallway, peered into the dining room, looked at the swimming
pool in the back, checked both bathrooms. No Dorrie. Out shopping, no doubt. It was annoying, but it couldn't be helped, and he was just about to leave a note for her, staring out the window while he tried to think how to phrase the note, when he saw her driving up in her micromidget two-seater.

  He had the door open for her before she got to it.

  He expected she would be surprised. He had not expected that she would just stand there, her pretty eyebrows raised and motionless, her expression showing no movement at all. She looked like a snapshot of herself, frozen in the middle of a step.

  He said, "I wanted to talk to you about something. I just came from the Chero-Strip, because Brad is involved too, but—"

  She came to life and said politely, "Let me come in and sit down." There was still no expression on her face as she paused in the hallway to look at herself in the mirror. She smoothed some blemish on her cheek, fluffed her hair, went into the living room and sat down without taking off her hat. "It's awfully warm out today, isn't it?" she observed.

  Roger sat down too, trying to collect his thoughts. It was important not to frighten her. Once he had watched a television program about how to break bad news, some shrink with a need for more patients and a fear of being labeled unethical keeping him from hiring a man with a sandwich board, going on the talk shows in the hope of catching a few live ones for his waiting room. Never be blunt, he said. Give the person a chance to prepare himself. Tell it a little at a time. At that period Roger had thought it was comic; he remembered telling Dorrie about it—Honey, have you got your charge card? . . . Well, you'll need it for the black dress . . . The black dress for the funeral . . . The funeral we have to go to, and you'll want to look nice because of who it is . . . Well, after all, she was a pretty old lady. And you know she didn't drive very well. The policemen said she didn't suffer after she creamed the truck. Your father's bearing up very well. They had both laughed about it.