Ambient (34 page)

George led Mister Blaicek through the door. I tried to see beyond; there was a corner within, around which they turned, and
disappeared. I saw no further.

"Again, Seamus," she said, a minute or so later. "Watch."

George pulled in a hairy, muscular man, who was dragged out
like a transy, wearing a knee-length flowered dress. George reached
down, lifting the hem above the man's waist. I shuddered; he
appeared to have been castrated.

"Miss Wallace," said Alice.

"Where?"

"There. She spent her time busying herself in luring secrets
from Army men in the midst of pleasure, killing them afterward
in her bed as they recovered from her carnal charms. No more.
We adjust the punishment to suit the crime, if necessary to sustain the most pertinent memories. Very simple. Heavy daily doses
of testosterone. The clitoral development is remarkable, don't
you think? Liver cancer has appeared in recent weeks, though
certainly any causal relationship involving her treatment must remain a supposition. No need to tell her, in any event; she's had
enough toward which to adjust. All right, George."

They left. "I get the idea," I said.

"One more, as requested," she said. "George? Bring out
Johnny."

"I don't think it's necessary-"

"Afraid we're gonna try one of these on you, aren't you?" the
Old Man asked, grinning again.

George returned, bearing in his arms a small, frail old man, no
more than a wrinkle. It was a remarkable pieta. So strange it
seemed to me at first; no one grew this old anymore. The little
man fixed dead eyes on me; blue veins lay livid beneath his crisp
skin. His jaw quivered; he drooled.

"This is Johnny," said Alice. "He'll be thirteen in August.
Johnny was nine when he was enrolled in our courses. His parents were named as problematic; being bright he was irrevocably
charmed by their excesses. Progeria was induced. He ages a month
in a day. A year in a fortnight. He's been a model child since his
arrival. "

He extended toward me a corded, translucent arm, reed-thin
and shaking.

"You seem troubled, Seamus," she said.

"What did you do to his parents?" I asked.

"They're here, taking care of him. As parents should."

It was more than enough. I turned, away from Alice's blank
blue screen, toward the Old Man.

"You spent years of research and who knows how much money
to build her, and then you use her for this?"

The Old Man nodded. "What's the matter with that?"

"It's wrong."

He laughed, quite open and free from guilt. "You're a fine one
to talk morality, O'Malley. Past twelve years you've spent your
time bashin' anybody my son didn't like. Children. Old ladies.
Puppies. Don't give me that shit."

"What do you think, then?" I asked Alice. "You do think."

"Seamus," she said, "I cannot alter original programs. I cannot but do as I was programmed to do in this regard. What I learned, I learned from one source. What I learned from other
machines came from that same source. My life is that of those
who built. Blame me, if you will. Blame the sun for shining;
blame water for running. Blame the lamb that dies, blame the
sparrow that falls. I show what I see, I reveal what I know, I do
as I was told. There is no malice in what I do. Neither love nor
hate do I have for those with whom I deal. Those I touch continue
to live. I can't undo what I was given to do. " She paused. "A
job's a job, Seamus, and I always do my job."

"In Godness's name-"

"God?" she asked. "Would God have created me without man
to take the fall? Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor ulli."

"Speak English, Alice," said the Old Man.

"I am a barbarian here," she translated, "for no one understands me."

"We worked up a little surprise for you, O'Malley," said the
Old Man. "Show him, Alice."

?"
"You believe it necessary

"Yes," he said.

"All right," she said, and called to George once more.

"Threats aren't a good thing at all," said the Old Man, "They
tend to make everybody a little more upset than they need to be.
I don't make threats, myself. I just do. Now the way you was
talkin' this afternoon made me think you had a threat or two in
mind. Don't like that, O'Malley. Don't like that at all."

The light on the keyboard flashed again. A door opened; George
wheeled out a gurney. Someone lay on it, from the neck down
covered with a clean white sheet.

"So this afternoon while you were out I had a few of my boy's
gang go out and pick somebody up for me. You know how smooth
they can be."

Enid lay there, her head nestled on soft down pillows. Her
nails had been removed. Her eyes were closed as if she were
dead.

"She gave 'em some fight. Not enough."

"Enid-!"

"Go see your sister, O'Malley."

As I ran over to her still ghost, she opened her eyes, blinking
them as if they were filled with smoke. I think that she heard me
scream.

"Calm down," said the Old Man. "She's all right."

"What'd you do to her?" I asked. "Enid, are you all right?
Enid-"

She stared at me as if we'd never met- or had, but only once,
and that for but a short time, many years before.

"Seamus?" she said, her voice low and quiet; I imagined
whatever drugs they'd put into her were still working their way
through. Her eyes shifted furtively. Colored bandaids shaped like
stars and circles covered her nails' old sockets. "Is that you?"

"Of course-"

She pulled her hand out from beneath the sheet, reached up,
and stroked my chin. "What have you gotten into now?" she
asked. "What's on there?"

I took her hand. She looked puzzled, as if she'd walked into
our apartment and found the cabin of an airliner rather than our
front room. "I don't know what you mean," I said.

"You look so old," she said. "Where are we?"

"The Tombs."

"What?" she said. "What's that? Are we at Bellevue?"

I looked over to the Old Man; he stood next to Alice's keyboard, tapping his foot as if to new rhythms that only he heard.

"What did they do to you?"

"What did who do? Where are we? Where's Dad?"

I held Enid's head in my hands, pulling her closer to me.

"I warned you that this might happen," said Alice to the Old
Man.

"Yeah, I'm real touched."

I felt tears rolling down my cheeks, with the gentle feel of summer rain. Enid rubbed her hands over my face as if hoping to
scrape something away.

"What's wrong with her?" I asked them.

"When she was brought in," Alice said, "the best treatment
adjudged for your sister was considered to be instigation of a
specialized form of Korsakov's Syndrome. This involved chemically induced destruction of certain mamilliary bodies within the
brain. Quite simple to effect; the entire procedure didn't take fifteen minutes."

"What does that mean?"

"She now has a rather intriguing and perpetual form of amnesia. Everything after a certain point in life has, for all intent, been
forgotten. As she encounters new experiences, all memory of
having had them will vanish within a few minutes of their occurrence. All that she will retain within her mind are memories of
her life up to whatever point in time the effect takes hold. That
cannot be predicted until the syndrome is effected."

Enid looked at me as if I could tell her what might be going
on, but fearful that for whatever reason, I couldn't. The last time
I had seen that look in her eyes was the afternoon she was raped.

"In your sister's case that point seems to be at about age sixteen. All that occurred before remains. All that has happened
since, and that will happen in future days, will fade. Think of it
as a continuous sunset, where what is bright one moment is dark
the next. Over and over and over again. "

"Is Dad coming back to get us, Seamus? What'd he say? He's
been gone for ages."

I stroked her forehead, feeling her smooth, cool brow. She'd
let her hair grow back out, I supposed.

"Why?" I said, turning to the Old Man.

"Why not?"

"You didn't have to do anything to her. There wasn't any
fucking need for this-"

"I wanted to make sure you didn't get any more funny ideas in your head, either. These Ambients are more trouble than they're
worth, anyway. Oughta treat 'em all if we could catch 'em."

"What'd you do to Margot? Was she around?"

"Her little girlfriend?" the Old Man said. "Nowhere in sight.
If I didn't know better I'd swear the real ones could tell the future-"

Whatever he did to me now, whatever they wanted to do,
whatever they could do, seemed a welcome thing to me. Even
then it all seemed so impossible to grasp, so hazy at the edges,
as if, somehow, I'd gone into one of my dreams and therein decided to never again awaken.

"She's still alive, Seamus," said Alice. "There is such a thing
as overkill in this field, so difficult as some here find it to believe.
Here, troubling impulses cease to trouble. Harmlessness is ensured and individual worth retained. "

"What are you planning for me?"

"You can stay here and take care of your sister," said the Old
Man. "Or I'll send you on to wherever you were gonna go. I
think the essential point's been made here. You don't strike me
as anything but small potatoes under these circumstances. A casualty of the process."

"Alice," I said, so unexpectedly to me as it must have seemed
to the Old Man-but I had to know. "What's the problem with
the Pax?"

The Old Man's face drained of color. "Don't-"

"Do you mean the Pax Atomica?"

"Yeah-"

"Don't tell him, Alice-" The Old Man grabbed me, attempting to clamp his hand over my mouth; I pulled away, falling
down before her monitor. Stabbing pains cascaded over my chest
like breakers against the shore as my bandage loosened.

"What's wrong with it that he knows about?"

"Don't tell him-" The Old Man lunged for her screen as if
intent on smashing it; as he laid first fingers upon her surface she let a charge run through him. He yelled, and dropped to the floor,
breathing heavily.

"You cleared him," she said. "I have to answer him so well
as I can. That's part of my original program, as you know-"

"You don't have to-" he cried. I carefully pulled myself
upright as she began to explain.

"The Pax Atomica," she said, "specified that the face of earth
be cleared of nuclear weapons. As not specified therein, the sky
is full of noises. Watch, Seamus. See as I see."

Her screen came alive with vids of thousands of missiles and
rockets being launched into space; I looked over to Enid. She
seemed to have gone back to sleep-I suspected it was all a bit
much for her at that moment. Avalon still stood in her tiny room,
pacing back and forth like a rat in a cage.

"The only dissembling was in the speeches given on launch
day. The weapons entered orbit fully operational. By secret
agreement this was judged the safe thing to do."

"How?" I asked. The view now was of thousands of satellites
circling the world, fireflies drawn by the shine.

"A technique whereby missiles launched could be diverted from
their targets by way of telesignal and sent back to their starting
point was developed by the United States. Russia was informed.
Secret tests were carried out. An agreement was made whereby
each country was allowed to keep the system operational, for
whatever reason-not to be used at any time, as agreed publicly,
but yet remaining handy. Possibly it would have seemed too great
a waste of money, otherwise.

"So what happened to it? How-"

"The program was developed while the American government
was in a state of religious flux. As revealed in a letter sent by him
to the president immediately before his suicide, the head of the
American scientific team claimed that one evening, as he worked,
God appeared to him in some human guise, and he converted on
the spot. He reworked a certain part of the setup unbeknownest to his fellow workers, which he said God wished him to add. He
added. When the system effected, it involved his additional designs."

"What did those do?"

"The system," she said, "can be set off by an activator whose
location remained a secret as of his death. He did say that it could
be moved or even touched; that he'd placed it where it might be
set off, by coincidence, by anyone."

"Why did he do that?"

"His reasoning was that what he called a `Hand of God factor'
be present in any plan of humanity's or else the function of God
would be usurped by humanity. Though no evidence was found
in any file I would suspect paranoid schizophrenia played a
role-"

"What'll happen," I asked, "if it is set off?"

"Hear as I tell," she said. "See as I see."

A new image formed on her screen; the scene was of the earth
as seen from the moon. Tiny blinking dots circled endlessly around
it.

"When activated the mechanics are stylish but simple. Lasers
activate each rocket's missiles and each satellite's missiles. Reverse communication signals then go on, directing the path each
shall follow. Though the original system has only 90 percent certainty of completion, the Russian missiles will be automatically
set off even if but one American missile strikes Russian territory;
that is a built-in fail-safe. The missiles begin firing in sequence,
geometrically. As programmed, the weapons are knocked down
on those who theoretically launched them. Most American missiles hit American targets; most Russian missiles hit Russian targets. Each missile has ten separate warheads aimed at ten separate targets. The sequence progresses until all are fired."

I watched the screen; ribbons of yellow encircled the globe as
if someone was wrapping it up to give away. Chrome flashes
lightened the surface of the deep. Within a minute, the earth glowed blazing pure; it dulled as fast, whitening with cold, leaving a pale
scarred ball reflecting the sun's distant gleam.