The Tomorrow File Page 22

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Complex,” he said.

  “Richly complex,” I agreed. “But only in the details. The overall design is elegant. Almost pretty. I gather you’re not interested.”

  He leaned forward, hands clenched between his knees. He almost hissed. I was startled by the venom in his face.

  “You think I haven’t been computing this?” he demanded. Voice low and intense. “Every minute. Waking and sleeping. Ways. Means. Methods. Plots. Plans. Including inviting her out to lunch, saying, ‘Oh, Angela, look at that woman in the funny hat,’ and then slipping a bomb in her drink.”

  “I know,” I said sympathetically. “But that’s stupidity.”

  “I know it is,” he said passionately. “I knew it when I thought it. But I thought it, Nick, I actually thought it. Your way is best.” “You’re sure?”

  “I can’t better it. Dangerous. For both of us. But the possibility of success is there. Jesus, Nick, you’ve got to be so careful.” “Not only me,” I said. “You, too. Then you’re in?” “Whatever you ask,” he said.

  I leaned forward. He leaned forward. We kissed. Then we leaned back. Both of us took a deep breath. Knowing we had crossed a line. “What’s first?” he asked.

  “That lawyer in Oakland—the one who discovered who owns Angela’s beachhouse. What’s his name?”

  “Sam Gershorn.”

  “Flash him tomorrow. From outside the compound. Tell him you have an obso friend who’s retiring and thinking about the San Diego area. Ask Gershorn if he can recommend an attorney in the San Diego area who handles investments, especially industrial properties and real estate.”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  We started to rise from our chairs, then Bumford settled back. He touched his lips with two pressed forefingers.

  “What input do you have on Art Roach?” he asked.

  “Not much. Subjective reactions. Not a profitable em. Potentially violent.”

  “Yes. I’ve been making a few cautious inquiries. Here and there. He used around the Section a lot. All efs. A stallion. And not nice. Rough.”

  “Psychopathic?”

  “Probably. Sado. He put one ef into a hospice. About a year ago.

  “I didn’t hear anything about that.”

  “Angela glossed it.”

  “She did?” I pondered that tidbit. “Yes, that makes sense. That’s how she knew Burton Klein was investigating her. Roach was her em inside DIVSEC. She bought him by covering up his assault. I told you: She doesn’t see problems, she sees opportunities.”

  “He’s a danger, Nick. As much as she is.”

  “I know.”

  “We should get a control on him.”

  Paul was right. I computed the problem, then forced myself to compute the opportunity. It would be difficult, with Art Roach stationed in Washington. But it could be fiddled.

  “You’re not going to like it, Paul,” I said.

  “I told you, whatever you ask.”

  “Your new secretary. Maya Leighton.”

  “What about her?”

  “Bisexual?”

  “Possibly. I think so. Why?”

  “Is she using Mary Bergstrom?”

  “I doubt it. Maybe. I don’t know. Is it important?”

  “Very. We can’t afford to alienate Mary. Can you find out if they’re users?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Paul, do it. Casually, humorously, if you can. If not, a direct question.”

  “All right. Then?”

  “I’ve got to use Maya.”

  “Nick!”

  “Got to.”

  “I don’t follow.” “To set up Art Roach.”

  “Ahh.”

  “You don’t profit from the idea of my using Maya?”

  “No.”

  “Paul, it’s necessary.”

  “I know, I know. How will you get her together with Roach?” “No idea. Yet. I’m just winging it. But the first step is determining if she’s right for the service. What do you think? Is she ambitious?”

  “Very.”

  “Sexually curious?”

  “Yes.”

  “On anything? Smoking? Drinking? Popping?”

  “On everything. But she functions. And very well.”

  “So?”

  “Yes. You may be right, Nick. You always are. I’ll set it up. ” “No, I’ll set it up. Friday night. You and Mary Bergstrom and Maya Leighton come up about 2100. We’ll have a few drinks, smoke a little hemp, talk a little business. Nothing about this. Understand?”

  “Of course.”

  “During the evening, I’ll get Maya aside and suggest she leave with you and Mary, and then come back up here about a half-hour later. You know nothing about it.”

  “I compute, Nick.”

  “She may return or she may not. If she doesn’t, we’ll have to find another ef. If she does, I’ll take it from there. Paul, are you certain you control Mary Bergstrom?”

  “Certain.”

  “Are you users?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you control her?”

  “Well.. . .Well, we talk. I listen to her. I even listen to her play the flute. She doesn’t have any friends. So I—”

  “Paul? What is it? Do you have an investment in this ef?” “Nick, I swear to you, I don’t know. I don’t really know. That's operative. I do know she’ll do whatever I say.”

  “That’s good enough for me. Let’s get moving on this.” “Thank God! At last!”

  After he left I had another drink. I paced the floor. I knew what

  was bothering me. /should have thought of the idea of getting a hook into Art Roach. Paul Bumford was not only becoming more confident, he was creating fresh and operative ideas. I wasn’t certain that development was lovable.

  I took an eight-hour Somnorific.

  Y-3

  On Friday morning, I sat down to a breakfast of dissolved orange-flavored concentrate (500 mg of ascorbic acid per teaspoonful), probisks, and a hot cup of coftea. As I munched and sipped, I scanned the front page of my facsimile Times.

  The lead story, under a three-column head on the left-hand side (human behavior analysts had finally realized that most non-Judaic objects scanned from left to right) carried a Washington, D.C., dateline. It concerned a speech delivered by Angela Berri, Director of Bliss, to the national convention of the Actuarial Guild of America. Angela stated at the outset that the ideas she would express were based on the concepts of Hyman R. Lewisohn.

  A radical revision of the Social Security laws was proposed. An object who had contributed to the SS fund all his serving life, and to which his employers had contributed, would have an equity in that fund. It would not end when he stopped. It could be bequeathed. It would be part of his estate.

  Such a law, if enacted, would mean a revolutionary adjustment of Social Security deduction rates. An upward adjustment, of course. It would also mean the US Government was getting into the life insurance business. I could well believe the New York Times report that Angela’s proposal had been greeted by the assembled actuaries with “incredulous murmurs.”

  That was of no importance to me. What I found of interest was Lewisohn’s basic conception. For some time, I had suspected that all the ideas from his prodigious brain were not simply fragmentary answers to fragmentary problems. I imagined that extraordinary em had conceived a Plan, and every suggestion he made was part of a visualized design.

  That filthy, cantankerous dwarf was putting together a new world, his world. I could not perceive its delineation. But I knew, knew, there was a grand Lewisohn Plan. He was creating a mosaic, a piece here, apiece there, chuckling obscenely. I found it a stress to manipulate SATSEC. He read his obso novels, vilified his doctors and nurses, scorned the rot of his corpus, and jauntily encompassed us all.

  The moment I arrived at my office I flashed the Chief Resident at Rehabilitation & Reconditioning Hospice No. 4. He came on screen almost immediately
, with his habitual manner of expecting every call to presage disaster. Dr. Luke Warren was a perennially worried little em. His field was biomedicine, and he was good. Not just competent, but good.

  “Luke,” I said, “how are you?”

  He told me—at length. I had heard the story before: Hyman R. Lewisohn was destroying his sanity.

  “Insulting, is he?” I asked. Knowing the answer.

  “Insulting? Nick, that I could take. But he’s obscene. Yesterday he threw a full bedpan at the morning nurse. His language and habits are filthy. The only way I can get anyone to attend him is to bribe them with extra threedays. We had to put him in restraint to clean him up, and then he complained to the Chief Director who ordered me never to do that again. He pulls out his tubes, spits out his pills, urinates on the floor. Nick, he’s a beast.”

  "I know, I know,” I said. “Luke, you’ ve got a megaproblem; no doubt about it. How is he responding to treatment?”

  “Not good. Want to go to marrow transplant?”

  “No. Not yet. It’ll incapacitate him for too long. Have you ever used the BCG vaccine with irradiated tumor cells?”

  “A few times. Nick, it just postpones the inevitable. I think we’d do better to go to the marrow now.”

  “Tell you what. Suppose I come down next week and we’ll talk about it. Maybe I can persuade him to stop acting like a depraved child.”

  “Oh, God, would you do that? It would be a big help.”

  “I’ll flash you on Monday and we’ll set a time. Don’t tell him I’m coming. But alert your team; I’ll want a colloquy.”

  I switched off and looked at my next week’s schedule. That would be an all-day consultation. Lewisohn was suffering from acute myelogenous leukemia. There were several methods, of treatment; if one didn’t serve, you tried another. You hoped the patient would hang on until you found something effective.

  Ellen Dawes came in for the morning ration of real coffee. She was her usual smiling, pleasant, unflappable self; a good way to start a hectic day.

  When Angela Berri had moved to Washington, she had taken two of her four secretaries with her. That left me two short. I brought Ellen with me. Now I was one down. Paul Bumford, with the addition of Maya Leighton, had his appropriate three. But of course, I had wall-to-wall plasticarp while his, in my former office, ended twelve inches from the baseboard. Also, I had a private nest, a small kitchen, and windows on three sides.

  I had an 0930 meeting scheduled with Frances and Frank von Liszte the twin Assistant Deputy Directors of the Division of Law & Enforcement. I went over to their conference room, at their request, since they wanted to make a presentation that involved big charts, graphs, visual aids, etc. Also, they wanted the top objects of their staff to be present. As I had expected, the meeting dealt with the legal problems of inheritance generated by the Biological Revolution.

  At that point in time, we had developed fourteen methods of mammalian reproduction, seven of which had been used successfully on human objects:

  1. Artificial insemination

  2. Artificial enovulation

  3. Parthenogenesis

  4. Fertilization in vitro, the fetus brought to “birth” in an artificial placenta

  5. Auto-adultery (resulting only in ef offspring)

  6. Embryonic cloning

  7. Sexual intercourse

  This list, of course, did not include embryonic or gonadal transplants, which posed similar legal problems.

  In artificial insemination, did the child inherit from the mother’s husband or from her donor? Could the husband sue for divorce on the grounds of adultery—even if he had agreed to the impregnation but changed his mind later?

  In artificial enovulation, did the child inherit from the ef who bore it, from the ef who donated the fertilized egg, from the em who provided the sperm, or from the husband of the ef who bore the child?

  In cloning, where as many as twenty identical offspring had been produced from a single embryo, did all progeny inherit equally?

  I had heard all these problems discussed before, endlessly. But in that morning’s conference, new input was added. The von Liszts, after a great deal of research, had come up with reasonably firm statistics on the number of objects in the US bred by methods other than using. They also displayed charts showing computerized projective curves on the number of such objects to be expected in five, ten, twenty-five, and fifty years. It was brain-boggling.

  “Well,” I sighed, after the presentation, “what solution do you suggest—or was this just a preview of my future migraine?”

  I derived a lot of profit from Frances and Frank von Liszt. They were attractive twins with their infantile complexions, flaxen hair, light blue eyes, young profiles. I could believe the rumor that they used each other. Why not?

  Now, speaking alternately, they explained what they proposed. They were getting nowhere with bar associations. The debates on recommended legislation were futile. What the von Liszts suggested was an official government “position paper” that would at least give a basis for logical and informed discussion by interested jurists.

  I questioned them and their staff closely. Did a child born of electrical parthenogenesis have any legal father other than a dry cell? If clones were brought to “birth” at different times, either in an artificial placenta or by implant, would the one born first be the senior, inheriting from the natural father?

  It was a lively discussion. I enjoyed it. I had no law degree, but I knew molecular genetics better than they. I finally approved of their plan to draw up a preliminary government position paper. I also suggested they give some thought to a discussion with academics of the government’s Science Academy with a view to creating a new field of Biological Jurisprudence: objects conditioned in genetics and law.

  I went back to my office, not optimistic that their proposed position paper would ever be allowed distribution to the civilian bar associations for which it was intended. Too controversial. And if it was distributed, would it help clarify the issues? The kaka would continue, perhaps even intensified.

  Paul Bumford was waiting for me. I took him into my inner office and closed the door.

  “All set for tonight?” I asked.

  “Yes. We’ll be up about 2100.”

  “No fancy dress. Just an informal get-together.”

  I was speaking to the suspected sharer as much as to him. He computed.

  “Another thing, Paul,” I said. “Please get out a Telex to all the Hospices asking how many parabiosis volunteers each can furnish for a leukemic victim. Don’t mention Lewisohn by name. The less publicity on this the better.”

  “You’re going to parabiosis?”

  “Not immediately. Just preparing. Anything else?”

  “No, that’s all. Walk me to the elevator?”

  “Sure.”

  In the crowded corridor, a zipsuited throng was noisily waiting for high-speed elevators to take them down to the building cafeteria.

  “San Diego,” Paul murmured. “Hawkley, Goldfarb and Bensen. Got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hawkley is the only senior partner still alive. Sam Gershorn says he’s one year younger than God. But he has some smart junior partners.”

  “Good. Can you come up early tonight? Just you. About 2030. The efs at 2100.”

  “Uh-huh. Important?”

  “No. Just talk. For the Tomorrow File.”

  “Fine. I’ll fix it. See you at 2030.”

  As DEPDIRSAT, I carried weight at the motor pool. I had first choice of the Section limousine, a huge, black, diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz. Reserved for my exclusive use was an electronically powered two-door Chevrolet. I took the small sedan and drove up to Canal Street, to one of the public flasher stations scattered around the city. I wore a light raincoat over my zipsuit.

  I sat in a small booth and after about five minutes of spelling the names for Information operators, I finally got through to Hawkley, Goldfarb & Bensen in San Diego. I made cer
tain my raincoat was zipped up to the neck; my uniform wasn’t visible.

  A plumpish, matronly secretary came on.

  “Hawkley, Goldfarb and Bensen,” she said, in a surprisingly deep, emish voice. “May I serve you?”

  “Could I speak to Mr. Hawkley, please? My name is Nicholas Flair. I’m calling from New York.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Hawkley isn’t in today. Could you speak to someone else?”

  “To Mr. Hawkley’s secretary, please. I’d like to make an appointment to meet with Mr. Hawkley.”

  “Just a moment, please, Mr. Flair. I’ll see if she’s in.”

  She went off-screen. A full-color reproduction of one of Van Gogh’s self-portraits unexpectedly took her place. And I was treated to a symphonic rendition of Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. It was a new device introduced about a year previously. When a commercial operator had to hold a call, she switched on a gadget that simultaneously showed an “ageless painting” and played “immortal music.” So the caller wouldn’t get bored waiting. I wondered how long it would be before there were similar gadgets showing illustrations from the Kama Sutra and playing “Gimme Head Blues.”

  When Van Gogh disappeared, and Bach was cut off in midstrain, the ef who appeared was very young, very blond, very— “Yes, Mr. Flair?” She dimpled. “I am Mr. Hawkley’s private secretary. May I serve you?”

  “I’m calling from New York,” I repeated. “I’m coming out to San Diego next week and would like to make an appointment to meet with Mr. Hawkley to discuss possible investments in real estate and industrial properties in the San Diego area.”

  “And may I ask who referred you to us, Mr. Flair?”

  “You may ask, but I won’t answer. It’s not important.”

  She didn’t seem shocked, or even surprised by my answer. She was making no notes. I suspected our conversation was being taped. “Would Tuesday afternoon at 1500 be satisfactory, Mr. Flair?” “Fine. I’ll be there.”

  “In case Mr. Hawkley is unable to keep the appointment, how may I get in touch with you, sir?”

  “Unfortunately, I’ll be out of town and unavailable,” I said. “But I’ll check with you Tuesday morning to confirm the appointment.”