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the depths where she lay watching a string of fat sausages parade in glowing
order before her awareness. They were like seeds with a lambent radiance
moving against a background of oiled black velvet. Sausages. Seeds. She saw
them then not precisely as seeds, but as encapsulated life - walled in,
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shielded, bridging a period unfavorable to life. It made the idea of seeds
less repellent to her. They were life... always life.
'We don't need the genetic pool,' Schruille said. Calapine heard his voice
clearly, felt she could read his thoughts. Words out of one of the glowing
sausages forced themselves upon her: We have our millions in Central. We are
enough by ourselves. Feeble, short-lived Folk are a disgusting reminder of our
past. They are pets and we no longer need pets.
'I've decided what we can do to these criminals,' Nourse said. He spoke loudly
to force his voice over the growing hubbub in the hall. 'We will apply nerve
excitation a micron at a time.
The pain will be exquisite and can be drawn out for centuries.'
'But you said you didn't want to cause pain,' Schruille shouted.
'Didn't I?' Nourse's voice sounded worried. I don't feel -well, Calapine
thought. I need a long session in the pharmacy. Pharmacy. The word was a
switch that turned on her consciousness. She felt her body stretched out on
the floor, pain and wetness at her nose where it had struck the floor in her
fall.
'Your suggestion contains some merit, however,' Schruille said. 'We could
restore the nerves behind our ministrations and carry on the punishment
indefinitely. Exquisite pain forever!'
'A hell,' Nourse said. 'Appropriate.'
They're insane enough to do it,' Svengaard rasped. 'How can we stop them?'
'Glisson!' Lizbeth said. 'Do something!' But the Cyborg remained silent.
This is something you didn't anticipate, isn't it, Glisson?' Svengaard said.
Still, the Cyborg held to silence.
'Answer me!' Svengaard grated.
'They were just supposed to die,' Glisson said, voice dispassionate.
'But now they could sterilize all earth except Central and go on in their
madness by themselves,' Svengaard said. 'And we could be tortured forever!'
'Not forever,' Glisson said. 'They're dying.'
A cheer went up from the Optimen at the rear of the hall. None of the
prisoners could
turn to see what had aroused the sound, but it added a new dimension to the
sense of urgency around them.
Calapine lifted herself from the floor. Her nose and mouth throbbed with pain.
She turned toward the tumbril, saw a commotion among the Optimen beyond it.
They were leaping on benches to watch some excited activity hidden in their
midst. A naked body lifted suddenly above the throng, turned over and went
down again with a sodden thump. Again, a cheer shook the hall.
What're they doing? Calapine wondered. They're hurting each other -
themselves.
She wiped a hand across her nose and mouth, looked at the hand. Blood. She
could smell it now, a tantalizing smell. Her own blood. It fascinated her. She
crossed to the prisoners, showed the hand to Harvey Durant.
'Blood,' she said. She touched her nose. Pain! 'It hurts,' she said. 'Why does
it hurt, Harvey Durant?' She stared into his eyes. Such sympathy in his eyes.
He was human. He cared.
Harvey looked at her, their eyes almost level because of the tumbril's
position above the floor. He felt a profound compassion for her suddenly. She
was Lizbeth; she was Calapine;
she was all women. He saw the concentrated intensity of her attention, the
here-now awareness which excluded everything except her need for his words.
'It hurts me, too, Calapine,' he said, 'but your death would hurt me more.'
For an instant, Calapine thought the hall had grown still around her. She
realized then that noises of the throng continued unabated. She could hear
Nourse chanting, 'Good!
Good!' and Schruille saying, 'Excellent! Excellent!' She realized then that
she had been the only one to hear Durant's hideous words. It was blasphemy.
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She'd lived thousands of years suppressing the very concept of personal death.
It could not be said or conceived in the mind. But she had heard the words.
She wanted to turn away, to believe those words had never happened. But
something of the attention she had focused on Harvey Durant held her chained
to his meaning. Only minutes ago, she had been where the seed of life spanned
the eons. She had felt the wild presence of forces that could move with the
mitochrondrial structures of the cells.
'Please,' Lizbeth whispered. Tree use. You're a woman. You must have some
compassion.
What have we done to harm you? Is it wrong to want love and life? We didn't
want to harm you.'
Calapine gave no sign that she heard. There were only Harvey's words playing
over and over in her mind, 'Your death... your death... your death... your
death...'
Odd flickerings of heat and chill surged through her body. She heard another
cheer from the crowd in the far benches. She felt her own sickness and growing
awareness of the cul-
de-sac in which she had been trapped. Anger suffused her. She bent to the
tumbril's controls, punched a button beneath Glisson.
The carapaces of the shell which held the Cyborg began closing. Glisson's eyes
opened wide. A rasping moan escaped him. Calapine giggled, punched another
button on the controls. The shells snapped to their former position. Glisson
gasped.
She turned to the controls beneath Harvey, poised a finger over the buttons.
'Explain your disgusting breach of manners!' Harvey remained frozen in
silence. She was going to crush him!
Svengaard began to laugh. He knew his own position, the first-class
second-rater. Why had he been chosen for this moment - to see Glisson and
Boumour without words, Nourse and Schruille babbling on their bench, the
Optimen in little knots and eddies of mad violence, Calapine ready to kill her
prisoners and doubtless forget it ten seconds later. His laughter went out of
control.
'Stop that laughing!' Calapine screamed.
Svengaard trembled with hysteria. He gasped for breath. The shock of her voice
helped him gain a measure of control, but it still was immensely ludicrous.
'Fool!' Calapine said. 'Explain yourself.'
Svengaard stared at her. He could feel only pity now. He remembered the sea
from the medical resort at Lapush and he thought he saw now why the Optimen
had chosen this place so far from any ocean. Instinct. The sea produced waves,
surf - a constant reminder that they had set themselves against eternity's
waves. They could not face that.
'Answer me,' Calapine said. Her hand hovered above his shell's controls.
Svengaard could only stare at her and at the Optimen in their madness beyond
her. They stood exposed before him as though their bodies had been opened to
spill twisting entrails on the floor.
They have souls with only one scar, Svengaard thought.
It was carved on them day by day, century by century, eon by eon - the
increment of panic that their blessed foreverness might be illusion, that it
might after all have an ending.
He had never before suspected the price the Optimen paid for infinity. The
more of it they possessed, the greater its value. The greater the value, the
greater the fear of losing it. The pressure went up and up... forever.
But there had to be a breaking point. The Cyborgs had seen this, and in their
emotionless manner had missed the real consequences.
The Optimen had themselves hemmed in with euphemisms. They had pharmacists,
not doctors, because doctors meant sickness and injury, and that equaled the
unthinkable. They had only their pharmacy and its countless outlets never more
than a few steps from any
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Optiman. They never left Central and its elaborate safeguards. They existed as
perpetual adolescents in their nursery prison.
'So you won't speak,' Calapine said. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]