Genocide of One: A Thriller (40 page)

He continued down the narrow one-lane road, came to an area with only a sprinkling
of houses, and found a small house surrounded by deciduous trees. Rubens parked by
the side of the road and headed toward the front door of the white two-story wooden
house.

He casually glanced around, but of course he had no idea where the CIA surveillance
team might be concealed.

He knocked, and before there was even an answering voice, the door opened. Rubens
gazed at the small old man before him. “Are you Dr. Joseph Heisman?”

“I am,” the reply came back in a low, husky voice.

This scholar, author of the Heisman Report thirty years before, had left the front
lines of research and was now in his midseventies. He had on a woolen robe over an
old denim shirt. His short white hair was sparse, and his doubtful look was unexpectedly
stern. His eyes kept people at a distance, and Rubens couldn’t decide if this was
because of his lifelong search to see behind the laws of nature or whether it was
a vestige of a struggle against the world.

“It’s a great honor to meet you,” Rubens said, holding out a copy of Heisman’s book
An Outline of the History of Science
. “I’ve enjoyed your books since I was in college. I heard you lived here and was
hoping you could autograph my copy.”

Rubens opened the cover. His Defense Department–issued ID card was taped to the title
page. Heisman’s expression didn’t change as he stared at the card.

“I won’t keep you long. Do you think we could go inside?”

“Of course. Come in,” Heisman said.

Inside was a central staircase, to the right was a dining area and kitchen, and to
the left was a tidy living room decorated with photos of his family, including those
of his grandchildren. Rubens hadn’t seen a car parked outside and figured that Heisman’s
wife must have gone out shopping.

“So?” Heisman asked before they’d had a chance to settle down.

As he stood in the middle of the room, Rubens checked the windows and the scenery
outside. As they spoke, a laser listening device was detecting vibrations in the windowpanes
and reproducing those waves. Rubens was concerned about Heisman’s safety.

“My name is Arthur Rubens. I work at the Pentagon now, but I’m a senior analyst at
the Schneider Institute. In addition to getting your autograph, I have something I’d
like to ask your advice about.” As he said this, he took out a card tucked inside
the pages of the book and showed it to Heisman.
You are under surveillance by the US government. Please answer no to all the questions
I’m going to ask you now
.

Rubens waited for him to read it, then continued. “Would you give me more details
about what you wrote about in the Heisman Report?”

“No,” Heisman replied. “Getting involved with those stupid people in Washington was
the biggest mistake of my life. The last thing I want to do is relive those days.”

The emotional reaction didn’t seem like an act. Rubens hoped these weren’t his true
feelings.

“I just have a couple of questions I’d like to ask.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Just five minutes of your time?”

“No.”

“Really? Well, I’m very sorry to have bothered you.”

Thus Rubens established that Heisman had not been told anything about the special
access program. Rubens went on, expressing an admiration for Heisman that was real,
not part of the camouflage. “What I said at the front door a moment ago was true.
When I was in college reading your book really enlightened me. Would you mind signing
it before I go?”

Rubens held out a second card along with the book.

“Of course,” Heisman replied. “Since you’ve come all this way, I’d like to give you
one of my other books, too. Let’s go into my library.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind of you.”

Rubens followed the old man past the kitchen toward the rear of the house. There was
a small room, a sort of addition to the house that stuck out into the backyard. The
room was filled with bookcases, not just lining the walls but also filling the middle
of the room. Surrounded by thousands of volumes, Rubens felt as if he were getting
a glimpse into the great mind of the scholar.

Heisman shut the door behind him and switched on the light. “The windows are all blocked
by bookshelves,” he said. “There are no chairs or heating. Is this all right?”

“This is perfect,” Rubens answered. Under the naked lightbulb, Rubens felt like a
teenager meeting a rock star he was crazy about. “I’m sorry I have to do everything
in such a roundabout way. It’s for your own safety.”

“Why should I be under surveillance?” Heisman asked gruffly. “What evidence did the
court base their wiretap on?”

“There’s no warrant. That’s just Gregory Burns’s way of doing things.”

“Is this the Soviet Union? Or North Korea? What a pathetic, idiotic president.” Heisman
spat out the words. “Gödel was right.”

“Gödel?” Rubens was startled for a moment to hear the genius theoretician’s name.
He immediately recalled a well-known anecdote from the history of science.

Kurt Gödel, who shocked the mathematical world by proving the incompleteness of natural
number theory, left Nazi-controlled Austria and fled to America. In order to obtain
US citizenship he had to pass an interview with a judge, so Gödel, ever the serious
scholar, thoroughly studied the US Constitution. And he made a startling discovery.
Examined logically, the Constitution contains a major contradiction. Behind its advocacy
of democracy, it also created a system whereby a dictator can legally be created.
And of all things, Gödel chose the moment of his interview with the judge to give
a mini lecture about what he’d found. Fortunately, his guarantor and friend, Albert
Einstein, had arranged things ahead of time with the judge, so Gödel passed and became
a US citizen with no problems.

This was just an amusing anecdote from the history of science, but now, in the twenty-first
century, it was no longer funny. A dictator who saw himself above the law had actually
materialized. The original role of the attorney general and the president’s other
legal advisers was to scrutinize the legality of any decisions he made, but these
safety precautions no longer functioned. Under the Burns administration, the job of
lawyers was to distort legal interpretations so they suited the will of the president.
The administration was a complete dictatorship in which the president, commander in
chief of all the armed forces, could, in the course of his duties, ignore the law.

We’ve already lost to the Islamic fundamentalists, Rubens thought. The country that
valued freedom above all was no more. Why is it that the more politicians try to protect
a democratic system the deeper they fall into totalitarianism? Was freedom within
a nation nothing more than an illusion?

“To get back to what I was talking about—” Rubens began, but Heisman cut him off.

“Am I under surveillance because of that report I wrote?”

“That’s right.”

“Section five has actually come true, hasn’t it?”

Rubens tried not to be surprised each time Heisman revealed how sharp his mind was.
“Correct.”

“Where did it happen? Not in the Amazon, I would think. In Southeast Asia? Or was
it in Africa?”

“Why do you exclude the Amazon?”

“Minority groups in the Amazon perform infanticide on any deformed children. If a
new human species were born, they’d kill it right away.”

Rubens was startled at these words. In the two hundred thousand years of human history,
until about a hundred years ago—before modern medicine—an infant in any culture that
looked different from others was killed. Infanticide was a type of artificial selection.
If any evolved individual had appeared it must have been killed, too. Human beings,
always eager to exclude those who are different, might have nipped evolution in the
bud.

Then why this time did the Mbuti allow a child whose head was shaped so differently
from theirs to live? Had the Mbuti created a culture that accepted deformed children?
Rubens had no idea.

“As you have surmised, the site is in Africa, in the Congo. It’s a Pygmy child, already
three years old. Right now a secret mission is being led by the White House, and they’ve
put you under surveillance because there’s been a leak.”

Rubens explained the mission and background of Operation Nemesis, trying to be succinct
yet hit all the highlights. Heisman stood stock-still under the overhead light, for
all the world like a statue of a philosopher. When he heard that the Pygmy child was
given the code name Nous, he smiled. “A nice name,” he said. “And what do you think
is the cause of this evolution?” he asked.

“This is just a guess, but I think it’s a mutation in the transcription factor. There’s
a possibility that there was also a neutral mutation in a different gene. But even
if we were to analyze Nous’s complete genome, present-day science wouldn’t be able
to explain the mechanism by which a mutated gene created an evolved brain. This would
be even more true if it had an effect on epigenetics.”

Heisman nodded. “Continue,” he urged. Finally, after he’d heard Rubens tell the story,
the testy gleam returned to his eyes. “This is delightful. That a mere three-year-old
child can torment a superpower that much.”

“The reason I came here today was to see if you could give me any advice.”

“I have none to give,” Heisman said, spurning him. “My only regret is not being able
to see the president crying his eyes out.”

“Professor,” Rubens said, forcing himself to be calm. “You don’t seem to like this
administration very much.”

“Not just this administration. I hate anyone in power. They’re a necessary evil, I
suppose, but they’ve gone too far. I might even go so far as to say I hate human beings.”

Deep down, Rubens knew he felt the same way. “Why?”

“Of all living creatures, Homo sapiens is the only species that commits genocide against
its own kind. That’s the definition of humans. Human nature equals cruelty. The other
kinds of humans that used to live on the earth—early man and Neanderthals—were wiped
out by modern man.”

“So it was not our intelligence that led us to survive but our cruelty?”

“That’s the way I see it. The Neanderthals had a larger brain capacity than we do.
One thing we can say for sure is that modern man does not want to coexist with other
types of humans.”

Rubens knew this wasn’t some hasty conclusion. It was a fact that many unearthed Neanderthal
bones revealed wounds caused by violence, even traces of having been eaten. Forty
thousand years ago on the European continent, only two types of animals possessed
the intelligence to cook their catch—the Neanderthals and modern man.

“It’s a reasonable hypothesis,” Heisman went on. “The Europeans who advanced into
North and South America killed ninety percent of the native inhabitants through war
or epidemic. Most of the tribes were exterminated. And on the African continent, in
order to capture ten million slaves, many times that number of people were killed.
They were the same species as their captors, but the captors didn’t care. Modern man
treated other races very badly.”

When he remembered the history of the Congo, Rubens felt depressed. Slavery wasn’t
the only calamity that befell that country. In the Congo—once the private possession
of King Leopold II of Belgium—anyone who resisted the government’s tyranny was killed
by having his hands cut off. Before long the Belgians’ racial discrimination ran rampant,
and people collected the severed wrists of those they killed. Ten million people,
from infants to the elderly, were slaughtered. Up until the twentieth century only
the African continent was left behind by development because the slave trade and cruel
colonial control had stolen away the most valuable resource of all—its people.

“Humans can’t understand that they and other races are the same species. They distinguish
themselves by skin color, nationality, religion—even by narrow groupings such as geographical
region and family—and see these as their defining features. Individuals from different
groups are viewed with hostility, as if they were a different species. This isn’t
a rational decision but a biological characteristic. The human brain inherently distinguishes
different beings and views them as a danger. To me this is proof enough of humans’
cruelty.”

Rubens could understand Heisman’s point. “In other words this behavior is preserved
in the species because it aids survival. Conversely, if a person isn’t on his guard
against another race, then he’ll be killed by that other race.”

“True. It’s the same logic as when a type of animal that isn’t afraid of snakes is
then bitten by poisonous snakes, and its numbers decrease. The result is that individuals
who
are
afraid of snakes will survive in greater numbers, and most of their descendants will
have an instinctive fear of snakes.”

“But don’t we also have a desire for peace?”

“It’s much easier to call for world peace than it is to get along with one’s neighbor,”
Heisman replied sarcastically. “Look, war is just another form of cannibalism. Humans
use their intelligence to try to hide their instinct for cannibalism. They mix in
various kinds of sophistry to justify it—politics, religion, ideology, patriotism—but
deep down they have the same desires as animals. People killing other people to defend
their territory and chimpanzees going crazy and becoming violent when their domain
is invaded—how are these any different?”

“Then how do you account for altruistic acts? Some people do what we’d consider unselfish
good deeds.” As he said this Rubens pictured a seedy-looking Japanese—Kento Koga,
whose photo was attached to the report by the DIA. That young man, unappealing and
obviously unattractive to women—why would he continue developing a new drug even though
he knew it put him in grave danger?