Collective Mind (12 page)

All
this time the strange phrase “heart of the devil” kept running round
Pellegrini’s head. His intuition, or perhaps experience gave him a feeling
there was something about these words, some hidden sense. What if the madman
talked about some object?

If
the nurse had reported what Elvis said correctly, someone else had this “heart
of the devil”, not Elvis. Was this the ravings of an insane or an allegory that
could be decoded to find his accomplices? But then, what accomplices could he
have, except maybe another lunatic?

Accustomed
to not discounting even the most absurd theories, Pellegrini went back to the
UNICOMA office to inquire about what had been missing after the terrorist
attack. He was told that nothing had disappeared; the computer in the manager’s
office had simply been damaged. Pellegrini asked what was in the computer.
Nothing special, just working data, that was all. A pity. The “heart of the
devil” had turned to be just a fantasy.

It
was boring. And boring was the modern criminal world, consisting of nobody, but
fantasists, schizophrenics and freaks. There was no scope for a modern-day
Maigret – the commissioner’s role model – to spread his wings.

Time
went by, and the promising “bombshell” dug up by Bikie still had not exploded.
No clues and no interesting leads left by Link’s Japanese girlfriend have been
found. She had been granted a resident permit and got a job in the same
university where Link worked. All sorts of small stuff, but then, just like
with Link, her trail went cold. It looked like they were together, but the
whereabouts still remained unknown. Isaac tried feverishly to figure out a way
to hook the big fish Link and hoist him up out of the dark. What else should
they look for?

Bikie
was exhausted too, and he started to spend more of his time on things that had
nothing to do with the project.

 “Why
don’t we take a trip to his University in England?” Bikie suggested out of the
blue.

“To
England?”

“Why
not, we’ll get on a train in Paris and scoot over for a day or two. Thanks to
Wolanski we can afford to spend a little bit of money.”

“Of
course! An excellent idea! There’s a chance we might find something new there!”
said Isaac, brightening up.

Bikie
huddled over the computer and went to a website for railway tickets.

“Isaac,
you don’t mind if we go by train instead of flying, do you?”

“We
can, but why?”

“I
want to have a coffee in Paris. I like being there.”

“Then
Paris it is. Actually we could stay overnight.”

They
left on the earliest train and slept peacefully for the five hours to Paris. As
Bikie had planned, they set off to drink coffee in Île de la Cité,
at a brasserie not far from Notre Dame. They strolled round the center for a
while and had lunch in Montmartre, but they simply couldn’t relax. The hope
that they would find a lead at the University urged them on, straining their
nerves, so they didn’t stay for the night, but went to the station, handed in
their tickets for the next day and took ones for the next train. In the last
few years the length of the journey had shortened a bit, from two and half
hours to two. “Not a lot, but in mathematical terms that’s twenty per cent,”
Bikie calculated. He obviously wanted to talk, and there was almost an hour
left to London.

“Isaac,
what are you thinking about?” Bikie was ready to talk about anything at all to
avoid traveling in silence.

“About
how soon I can get the money for Vicky’s surgery,” Isaac replied. “I’ve almost
sold the patent, but I think it’ll be another month or two. I should’ve asked
Wolanski for the money. I would pay him back later out of my fee. What if
something goes wrong with her? Something that can’t be fixed?”

“Have
you and your sister known each other a long time?”

“Yes,
for ages. My mother got married for the second time when I was ten to a Russian
immigrant. He brought his daughter with him, Victoria. She’s younger than me,
but we became friends immediately. She’s, you know… clever and cheerful too.
She was always kind and considerate.”

“Yes,
and beautiful as well,” Bikie added. “I told you already, but I’ll say it again
– very beautiful. With looks like that she’ll be okay, she’ll have a good life.”

Isaac
got that clammy feeling again, that anxious stinging sensation somewhere in
behind his lungs, like the first time when Bikie praised Vicky’s looks. A
beautiful girl Isaac had known that before. He felt glad for her, because she
did not lack attention and had lots of admirers. The feeling Isaac had this
time was completely new, and entirely inappropriate somehow. He tried to banish
this anxiety and the thoughts that had begun distracting him more and more
often. He had never thought about Vicky as a young woman, in the sense of
someone who interested him as a woman. Argh, dammit! That sounded disgusting!
Even if she was his stepsister, she was still his sister. But controlling
feelings was a hard task, and Isaac’s thoughts kept turning back to Vicky more
and more often.

He
could not understand why he had not noticed it before. Vicky was nothing like
any of the others Isaac had dated. She was a hundred times better! Because…
because he loved her? That was not possible. It was the simple, logical conclusion,
and he wanted to send it packing, and his feelings with it. But he just could
not. Trying to think about it less only made it worse – the only thing he
thought about was her.

Isaac
looked too preoccupied, so Bikie decided to change the subject and distract
Isaac with anything that entered his madcap head. But then, seeing that Isaac
wasn’t responding, Bikie turned away to the window and started crooning another
of his revolutionary songs.

...
Steel rails like belts constrain the world.

People
are sleeping. All is quiet.

We
rush to abyss, through the night.

There’s
nothing there to stop the flight.

We
are inside the monstrous snake

That
has devoured the best of brains.

The
two of us woke up in wrath

To
wreak the choo-choo of its path.

So
let the convoy miss a curve,

Cars
break apart, disaster strike

But
wake and save all those who’ve there

Succumbed
to poison, unaware

Isaac’s
thoughts carried him farther and farther away. He recalled his chance encounter
with Michelle, but then his imagination was gradually taken over by Vicky. This
was a difficult dilemma, whereas he couldn’t figure out even simple cases. But
were there ever any simple solutions for someone in love? Everything
immediately got tangled up and seemed totally overwhelming, logic and desire
contradicting each other and desire always won. If everything sorted itself out
easily into neat pigeonholes in your head, then you were not really ensnared in
passion. But if you were flung from joy to sorrow and back again, like a
rollercoaster ride, and all your thoughts led back to the same person, then you
have really flipped big-time.

Isaac
believed there was no such thing as mutual love at first sight. Interest, and
which way it developed depended on the two people, especially if a third butted
in. A girl usually sensed any interest in her, and if there was even a drop of
interest in response, she started turning the screw gently on her admirer, not
deliberately, but out of innate female flirtatiousness. So deftly and naturally
to make someone fall head over heels in love with her, make him furious or
drive him insane. For no reason, other than to feel that she was in good shape
and get a buzz of confidence in her own sexuality. Or maybe Isaac had made all
this up and he was seeing hidden meanings in perfectly ordinary behavior?

One
thing he did know for certain was that he did not understand anything about
women. “Get lost!” could also mean “go away” or “try a bit harder”. It was
difficult to catch the real meaning. If the girl smiled as she said it, then
she probably liked the look of you, if she hid her eyes, then it really was
best to get lost, but infatuation automatically translated any words into “try
a bit harder”.

If
everyone left everyone the first time they were told to, the world would
probably have become a drab place long ago, the world wouldn’t have any
flamboyant couples like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Sean Penn and
Madonna. Mark Antony would never have conquered Cleopatra’s heart. True love
was only born by overcoming obstacles.

To
win a popular girl, accustomed to all the very finest compliments and tired of
constant attention, you had to fight really hard. You always had to fight for
love. Everything was complicated.

But
then girls fell in love easily too and suffered over some absolute jerk.

Isaac
had never known how to pick girls up, usually they picked up him. They were
mostly tourists in the bar. In the morning he always longed for the same thing
– for his casual girlfriend to get lost as soon as possible.

In
truth, Isaac had never really had a serious relationship. But that did not mean
he had never fallen in love. He had, and madly! Only he had never acted
resolutely enough.

There
was no one he could borrow experience from; he would have to find his own way
out of this mess. Isaac had a close friend, with whom he could clown around and
talk about everything including talking about love and his escapades ….Vicky,.
Oh God, now that Isaac realized he was falling deeper and deeper in love with
her, he was horrified at the thought of the details he had shared with her.
Yes, he definitely was facing the most nightmarish dilemma ever.

“Bikie,
listen,” he said, breaking the silence. “There’s something I wanted to talk to
you about, I’ve got this dilemma. I need your outsider’s point of view. Only,
please, without your usual gibes.”

“So
talk.”

“From
the age of ten I lived side by side with my stepfather’s daughter. We basically
thought of each other as brother and sister, and at the same time we were good
friends. But now I’m starting to realize that she’s becoming more than that to
mean that bothers me. What do you think?” Isaac paused, but then went on. “How
does it look to you from the outside?”

“It
looks okay to me…” – not a single muscle twitched in Bikie’s face. “I wouldn’t
bother about it. What’s could possibly be wrong? You’re not related.”

“We’re
not, but it’s still not exactly the right situation for starting an affair.”

“Isaac,
you shouldn’t get all hot and bothered over it. If you like her, I don’t see
any reason why you should not woo and date her. Only I don’t know how she’d
feel about that.”

“I
don’t know how she’d feel about it either. I just wanted to get clear for
myself how weird it is.”

“You
know, Isaac, we have enough real obstacles in this life. There’s no point in
inventing more. If you love her, then love her. I’ve never really fallen in
love in my life, so my relations with women aren’t clouded by prejudices and
fears. And believe me, lots of girls like guys who are direct and know what
they want, without clouding the issue pointlessly. Although, of course you have
to be aware of the subtle line between directness and coarseness.”

Isaac
looked so gloomy that Bikie decided not to press him and looked out of the
window at the colorful patches on the fields. But those colors didn’t arouse
the slightest romantic impulse in him.

Great
progress in agriculture was another achievement of COMA’s work. “The energy of
each person for the good of humankind” – as UNICOMA put it in its promotional
material.

All
the existing knowledge about agriculture, from the moment the primordial man
first began working the land right up to the present time, had been
systematized and integrated. A bundle of ideas from biological sciences, soil
science, meteorology, astronomy, chemistry and God knows what else had been
pooled together. And the result was that Collective Mind could indicate
precisely what to plant where in order to produce the largest harvest of the
most delicious fruit per acre of land. Even the demand and supply on the market
was taken into account.

The
technologies cost megabucks, and the first year saw a wave of protests from
farmers, but then everything quietened down. The correct use of the land
produced such large harvests that, despite a general reduction in the price of
agricultural products and the high cost of patents, farmers still made good
profits. One of Bikie’s friends, a Belgian called Matheo, only got into
university because his farmer father had started earning a lot more money

Futuristic
miracle-machines of gleaming metal worked in the fields. As a matter of fact,
if something looks like it’s arrived out of the future; it means the future is
already here. The freakish combine harvesters with dozens of robotic arms
droned as they harvested and processed. Up on the hills wind generators spun
their curved blades soundlessly, with five propellers on each. Hothouses with
solar-battery roofs shimmered opaquely in bright light, like iridescent patches
of petrol on water.

The
contents of supermarket shelves changed instantly. The tags “Natural”,
“Organic” and “GMO” disappeared. After three years of COMA’s work, they were no
longer needed. From then on no one used GMO technologies; they’d been outdated
by the arrival of new methods for growing organic produce.

Fertilizers
stopped being harmful to people and animals, their quality improved and they
became more effective. Matheo was as an old friend, and a big fan of
innovations. He and Bikie often argued about the harm and the benefits of COMA.

In
general the environment had benefitted a lot. Chemical barriers and filters,
waste disposal systems, technologies that reduced fuel consumption, high-power
hydrogen and solar energy motors – these were all technologies that could not
have been implemented without some powerful impulse. The world had definitely
improved with the arrival of OE and taken an innovative leap forward.

 Bikie
was the one who hated the new order of things. This sweet, utopian world of
smiling people had become too sterile to be regarded as real. It was more like
a world of obedient, squeaky-clean robots. An advanced computer game.