He Without Sin (22 page)

After another pause, during which we are all three silent, he adds, “The reason for the prediction algorithm is to prevent, if possible, a costly delay in the development of this environment. If the prediction positively indicates a problem of this nature … that is, the likely development of a non-ideal or worse, population … if it indicates the environment is moving down an unacceptable path…” David clears his throat before resuming, “we are charged with not only reporting that situation but also with the responsibility to correct it.

“We are going to correct it, and you both are going to help make it happen. Wes, you stay. Shipley, leave us now; I will call you back in in a few minutes.”

Ok, it’s not exactly what I was expecting but it’s something. I had the feeling he was going to try to ‘correct’ the gene pool problem and that’s what he says he is going to do. But no mention of any wrongdoing or censure of Wes. That still might be coming, but so far nothing, not even a hint. He talked about our responsibility to correct it. I would have added ‘especially if we caused it’ to that statement.

I get David’s message and rejoin the meeting.

“I have charged Wesley with overseeing and executing the necessary steps to ensure our mission is successful.” He nods to Brachus, who gets up and leaves after a cool courtesy nod to me. “Jason, sit down. We are off the record now.

“There have no doubt been a couple screw-ups, as you well know. And I do thank you for bringing them to my attention.” He pauses, and then says, “I take full responsibility. It’s my fault, and it’s my problem.”

“But you…”

“Let me finish. I am not going to let my mistakes up to this point taint the mission. I know what you are thinking and believe me Wesley knows exactly how I feel about… all of this. That’s precisely the reason I am having him clean it up.

“Now, your part. I need you to help clean up too,” David says, and I can feel a different mood overtake him in that his face has softened and the tone of his voice has mellowed. He works his lip a couple times before speaking. “Did any part of the Resource team’s data—their private channel—yet make it to the main system archives? I mean is any of it…”

“I know what you mean. I will have to check but I don’t think so. It seems to me that the reason for their insistence on private communication and data storage was for situations just like this and so…”

“There are other reasons for privacy, so don’t go there. Back to the point. Please take a look. Verify that nothing makes it through except for bone fide mission documents. If any of it did make it through… well, let me know what you find and…” and David trails off looking as if for me to finish his thought.

It’s my turn to pause, look David in the eye, and say, “I understand. I’ll take care of it.” No need to mention right now that I have made my own copy and have it safely tucked away.

______

“I did get an assignment after all, but my part is easy. Important to David and our mission legacy, and easy in the execution,” I say to Carol out at the bluffs. It is late evening and the warm breeze has died. The clear sky holds an impressive canopy of stars and we are on our backs looking up. The hiss of the surf endlessly cycles through its frequency shift: low, slowly rising, rising, and then effortlessly and quickly falling low once again to start over. The waves are coming in at an angle to the shore and so the sound has the additional feature of pleasantly gliding from right to left, north to south. I check my genie but am careful to keep the illumination low so as not to degrade my night vision.

“What are you doing? Do you keep looking at the time?”

“Nothing. No reason. Just checking the proximity alarm.”

“But there’s nothing out here to be afraid of. You’ve told me this more than once.”

“Have I? That’s right, don’t worry, there’s…” At last a bright speck catches my eye, moving against the background of stars. “There. See? There it is. Right on time.”

“What? Oh, there it is. I see it. What is… oh, that’s the old girl herself isn’t it. That’s the ship!”

“Right you are.” We are both watching silently for several heartbeats. “Grigor’s up there at the moment.”

“Yes, awesome. Grigor? Wait, I think… Yes, I see him. Odd… he seems to be complaining about something,” Carol says and laughs.

She’s the best. We watch the speck of the ship glide past. I am happy and relieved that I said something to David. It was the right thing to do. I am also happy to be with Carol. I roll over toward her and embrace her. We kiss.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” she whispers in her teasing way.

“Don’t worry.”

The times away with Carol are magical and
refreshing. We have already talked about when we
can do it again. Where to go? We both like our spot
on the bluffs. Sometimes the wind is too much, and
nearly constant, but the scenery along the coast,
the isolation—can we beat that? Porter said
something about his favorite spot, east was it?

The problem with going inland is the loss of the
isolation factor. And not just from people, but
animals too. It’s wild out there. If there were a
small island… Carol has done extensive mapping;
it’s time to check it out.

My part in David’s ‘correction plan’ is done. Brachus has disappeared from the base camp area
lately, as has Lester. I met with Craig and Porter
together at the mess hall and they are pretty shook
up about something. They clammed up when I
joined them. You could see from their faces that something’s wrong—pale, unsmiling. They are not
expert at hiding their emotions. They wouldn’t hold
eye contact and were slow in responding, even to
casual conversation.

Mark seems normal. He’s not as swamped as he
was, apparently, and has some new little pet
project he’s doing on the side. Wouldn’t show me.

Dylan’s not normal. I mean, he’s recovered from
the cat attack, but he’s got something serious on
his mind. I know because he stalked right into
David’s base camp quarters when Carol and I were
out once again at the rock ledge seat. We could see
his determination as he went in. They were in there
a long time and when he came out his expression
was grim. Not his usual demeanor at all.

Drastic Measures

“I can’t believe it. I really can’t.” His eyes are misty and he keeps moving them from one person to the next, and then back to the images he is holding in his hands.

We are in the mess hall with a small number of the crew minus Wes and Les, minus David and Doc. Carol left already.

“Can I see again?” Tracy asks. Dylan flips the pictures toward her across the small dining table. They slide and separate and end up near enough for her to grasp.

“You can’t hide something like this. It’s massive destruction of several adjoining populations in the lowlands.” Dylan is livid. “I went to David. I went… I went too late.”

“What are we looking at here exactly?”

Dylan peers across at the page she has on top. “Let me see it.” She tilts it. “That’s the ‘before’. Look at it next to the other. The pictures are of nearly the same area. The clouds are hiding some… You can spot the landmarks. Look.”

I get closer and look too. The edge of ‘our’ mountains is just inside the image and I can make out the coastline nearest to us. Those look the same. But other features are different. The one large lake—the one into which the little bio camp stream empties—is different. Its shoreline has changed, expanded dramatically.

“Ok fellas, that’s it,” says Grigor when he looks up from the images and around the table at all of us. “You see what’s happening? You do see… right? What have I told you? These are the people we are takin’ orders from? This is what we’re here for? Good luck to us all.” And he walks away muttering, roughly brushing past Mark, Aileen and Alain.

Although no one says anything, I can see their glances. I can see their looks.

“Mark—wait. Don’t go. I need to get down there again. What’ve you got?”

“Yeah, sure Dyl sure. Jimmy, fix ‘im up.”

______

“What exactly happened?” Carol asks after we get back. I went out with Dylan to see too. Carol thought he shouldn’t go alone. She was correct.

“A few things happened, all more or less at the same time.” “The guys are talking. Not Brachus or Lester, but the others are.”

“Yes, yes. Go on.”

I glance around and behind me; we are at our table in the corner of the mess hall. “I think David got scared. Maybe he scared Wes too. The idea that any ‘fingerprints’ remain must’ve done it. It looks like the traces of meddling were eliminated…”

“Is that what Dylan was showing us?”

“That’s the main part. The lowlands where a large portion of the people were living was flooded.”

“Flooded. But how? I saw… I know about the big lake.

Was it deliberately…?”

“Looks like it,” I reply and as I look up I see Carol looking over my head.

“That’s bull, man. It’s the rainy season down there. They were gettin’ washed away by the minute.” It’s Lester. He must’ve heard some of our conversation.

“Uh-huh. So you guys didn’t do anything to…

“It was full, overflowing. It would have gone any second anyway.”

“So you did. You ‘helped’ it along…”

“Look, we saved the people we were told. We saved ‘em. We’re the good guys here.” He rakes his shiny hair straight back and has an expectant look. Expectant and vulnerable.

“You’re the… You’re somethin’ all right.” I avert my eyes from him trying to make it clear that we had a private conversation going. “Where were we, Carol?”

Lester leaves without saying a word more. I was expecting a snide closing remark—but nothing.

“What in the world does he mean, the good guys?”

“Carol, look, without picking a right or wrong, I can see both sides. Assume David’s worried. He is. He’s got to be. Ok, we still have a chance to fix this—I’m thinking as he would now—and get back on track. That’s what he’s saying. What with the so-called giants, the interbreeding, whatever other supposedly sterile rejects from the old bio camp were mixing in—the genome is messed up. And the evidence is out there. Was out there.” I look at Carol to see any reaction before continuing. Nothing so far, she’s just listening. “That’s what he means—they cleaned it up. From that perspective, it’s a good thing.”

“Is there no other way…” Carol starts but she trails off.

“Of course,” I say, and again look around to see we are not overheard. “The right way is to not let it ever come to this. That’s where it went wrong. But it did, and they did, and here we are.”

Carol says, “For sure my opinion of David has dropped several steps; my opinion of Wesley remains the same; it cannot drop further. Do you actually think David okayed this? This method?”

“My personal opinion? No. I think he left it up to Brachus. The details anyway. The guys were saying too that there were some relocations. Not many. And also some chemical sterilization, not just the flooding. I’ll bet you any money though that Brachus either didn’t think the area affected would be so large or else never thought it would get the attention that it has. One of the two.”

“Dylan was pretty upset.”

“Yes he is and I’ll tell you something else. He normally keeps cool and calm but he told me that he went to David and said ‘Never again’.”

The concept of massive annihilation is troubling,
and not to just a few of us. It takes a real effort of
will to look towards the long term benefits.

David made a general and official announcement
about the current status. He emphasized that his
work, our work, has led to the happy discovery of
one small subset of the population, a family really,
that has, in fact, far surpassed our mission target
and will, given enough time, surely spread to cover
the globe. He has charged Brachus with monitoring
them and taking the necessary steps to see that
they flourish. That was it.

It amazes me that leaders such as David, but not
only him if history tells us anything, seem to have a
capacity for self-delusion. That is, in this case, even
though inept manipulation and unethical interference by David and at least some of his crew
have resulted in the wholesale slaughter of thousands, the right person can spin the situation
such that it seems like a good thing. It’s as if the
fact that we ourselves caused the problem can be
forgotten.

Carol and I both feel that, given his level of
emotional maturity, leaving Brachus to see to it
that the select group ‘flourishes’ is a mistake. It’s
just asking for more trouble. Why is it that David
doesn’t get it?

Part IV

Field Reports

I don’t get it. Sure it’s a wonder, it’s a marvel, but let’s go back already.

“Isn’t that something?” asks Porter, his glasses more askew than usual.

“Yeah, something,” I respond without really looking anymore.

“No, look. Look over there—where the glacier meets the ocean. A sharp line. Looks like it’s been cut with a knife,” exclaims Mark.

“Mark, you’re getting awful excited about this. You haven’t been getting out much, have you?” I counter, still not looking. I am not impressed with our flyover of the northern polar region. Ok, maybe the first few minutes. But when you’ve seen one incredibly vast blindingly white nearly featureless expanse…

“That’s all water ice and snow?” Porter asks, looking first at me, then Mark.