The Shockwave Rider (15 page)

There had been nothing comparable in western civilization since the Lisbon Earthquake shook the foundations of Christianity across half of Europe in 1755.

Now some semblance of regular government was in effect and had been for a quarter-century. But the scars left by the quake were cicatrized into the names of the new cities: Insecurity, Precipice, Protempore, Waystation, Transience … and Lap-of-the-Gods.

Inevitably, because these were new cities in a nation that had lacked a frontier these hundred years, they had attracted the restless, the dissident, sometimes the criminal elements from elsewhere. Up-to-date maps showed them dotted like accidental inkblots from Monterey to San Diego and inland over a belt almost two hundred miles wide. They constituted a nation within a nation. Tourists could still come here. But most often they decided not to. It felt more like home in Istanbul.

“Sandy!” Sitting down in a chair facing him, Kate tapped his knee. “You’re out of it so don’t slip back. Talk! And this time make sense. What makes you so terrified of Tarnover?”

“If they catch me they’ll do what they meant to do in the first place. What I fled from.”

“That being—?”

“They’ll make me over in a version of myself I don’t approve.”

“That happens to everybody all the time. The lucky ones win, the others suffer. There’s something deeper. Something worse.”

He gave a weary nod. “Yes, there is. My conviction that if they get the chance to try they’ll do it, and I won’t have a hope in hell of fighting back.”

There was a dull silence. At last Kate nodded, her face grave.

“I got there. You’d know what was being done to you. And later you’d be fascinated by the tape of your reactions.”

With a humorless laugh he said, “I think you lie about your age. Nobody could be that cynical so young. Of course you’re right.”

Another pause, this time full of gray depression. She broke it by saying, “I wish you’d been in a fit state to talk before we left KC. You must have been just going through the motions. But never mind. I think we came to a right place. If you’ve been avoiding towns like Lap-of-the-Gods for—what is it?—six years, then they won’t immediately start combing California for you.”

It was amazing how calmly he took that, he thought. To hear his most precious secret mentioned in passing … Above all, it was nearly beyond belief that someone finally was on his side.

Hence the calmness? Very probably.

“Are we in a hotel?” he inquired.

“Sort of. They call it an open lodge. You get a room and then fend for yourself. There’s a kitchen through there”—a vague gesture toward the door of the bedroom—“and there’s no limit on how long you can stay. Nor any questions asked when you check in, luckily.”

“You used your code?”

“Did you expect me to use yours? I have lots of credit. I’m not exactly an economist, but I’m blessed with simple tastes.”

“In that case the croakers will come calling any moment.”

“Shit on that. You’re thinking in contemporary terms. Check into a hotel, ten seconds later the fact’s on file at Canaveral, right? Not here, Sandy. They still process credit by hand. It could be a week before I’m debbed for this room.”

Hope he had almost ceased to believe in burgeoned in his eyes. “Are you sure?”

“Hell, no. Today could be the day the desk clerk makes up his bills. All I’m saying is it isn’t automatic. You know about this town, don’t you?”

“I know about so many paid-avoidance areas …” He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Is this one that’s settled down to about a 1960 level?”

“I guess that would be fairly close. I haven’t been here before, though I have been to Protempore, and I’m told the two are comparable. That’s why I hit on it. I didn’t want to take you anywhere I might be recognized.”

She leaned toward him. “Now let’s concentrate, shall we? The dobers
aren’t
howling at the door, and it’s long past time for me to learn the rest of your history. You seem to have spent a long while at Tarnover. Think you’re fettered by a posthypnotic?”

He drew a deep breath. “No. I wondered about that myself and concluded that I can’t be. Hypnosis isn’t one of their basic tools. And if it were, the command would have been activated long ago, when I first quit the place. Of course, by now they may well use posthypnotics to stop others copying my example. … But what I’m hamstrung by is in myself.”

Kate bit her lower lip with small and very white teeth. She said at length, “Funny. Meeting those grads from Tarnover that I mentioned, I felt sure they’d been treated with some quasi-hypnotic technique. They make my skin crawl, you know. They give the impression that they’ve learned everything, they could never possibly be wrong. Kind of inhuman. So my assumption has always been that Tarnover is some sort of behavioral-intensive education center for bright deprived kids, where they use extreme forms of stimulation as an inducement to learn. Zero-distraction environments—drugs, maybe—I don’t know.”

He picked on one key word. “You said … deprived?”

“Mm-hm.” With a nod. “I noticed that at once. Either they were orphaned, or they made no bones about hating their parents and family. It gave them a curious solidarity. Almost like White House aides. Or maybe more like the Jesus bit: ‘Who is my father and my mother?’ ” She spread her hands.

“When did you first hear about Tarnover?”

“Oh, it was news when I graduated from high school and went to UMKC four years ago. There was no publicity, at least not the drums-and-trumpets type. More kind of, ‘We got the answer to Akadiemgorodok—we think.’ Low-key stuff.”

“Shit, but they’re clever!” he said savagely. “If I didn’t hate them I’d have to admire them.”

“What?”

“It’s the ideal compromise. You just described what they obviously want the world to think about Tarnover; how did you put it? An intensive education center for bright deprived kids? Very admirable!”

“And it isn’t?” Her sharp eyes rested on his face like sword points.

“No. It’s where they’re breeding the elite to run the continent.”

“I wish,” she said, “I didn’t suspect you of being literal.”

“Me too! But … Look, you’re in power. Think what’s the most dangerous thing about a kid with no parents and a high IQ.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then suggested, “He won’t look at things the way the men in charge do. But he could be more right than they are.”

He slapped his thigh in delight. “Kate, you impress the hell out of me! You’ve hit on it. Who are the people recruited to Tarnover and Crediton Hill and the rest of the secret centers? Why, those who might invent sides of their own if the government doesn’t enroll them on its side while they’re still tractable. Yes,
yes
! But on top of that— Say, did you check this room for bugs?”

The exclamation was overdue; what had become of his customary caution? He was half out of his chair before she said with a trace of scorn, “Of course I did! And I have a damned good bug detector. One of my boyfriends built it for me. He’s a post-grad in the UMKC school of industrial espionage. So relax and keep talking.”

He sank back in relief and mopped his forehead.

“You said these Tarnover trainees you’ve met are mostly in the Behavioral Sciences Lab. Any of them in biology?”

“I met a couple but not at UMKC. Over the state line in Lawrence. Or they were. I loathed them and didn’t keep in touch.”

“Did they ever mention the pride and joy of Tarnover—the crippled kids they build with genius IQ?”

“
What?
”

“I met the first of them, who was called Miranda. Of course she was not a genius, so they counted it small loss when she died at four. But techniques have improved. The last example I heard about before I I quit still couldn’t walk, or even eat, but she could use a computer remote with the best of us and sometimes she was quicker than her teachers. They specialize in girls, naturally. Men, embryonically speaking, are imperfect women, as you know.”

There was never much color in Kate’s face. In the next few seconds what little there was drained away, leaving the flesh of her forehead and cheeks as pale as candlewax.

In a tight, thin voice she said, “Give me the details. There must be a lot more to it than that.”

He complied. When he had recited the full story, she shook her head with an incredulous expression.

“But they must be insane. We need a rest from ultrarapid change, not an extra dose of it. Half the population has given up trying to cope, and the other is punch-drunk without knowing it.”

“Sweedack,” he said dully. “But of course their defense is that whether or not it’s done here, it’s bound to be done somewhere by somebody, so …” An empty shrug.

“That’s okay. Maybe the people who come along second will profit from our example; maybe they won’t repeat all our mistakes. But … Don’t the people at Tarnover realize they could reduce our society to hysterics?”

“Apparently not. It’s a prime example of Porter’s Law, isn’t it? They’ve carried over the attitudes of the arms race into the age of the brain race. They’re trying to multiply incommensurables. You must have heard that applying minimax strategy to the question of rearmament invariably results in the conclusion that you must rearm. And their spiritual ancestors kept right on doing so even after H-bombs had written a factor of infinity into the equation of military power. They sought security by piling up more and more
irrelevant
weapons. At Tarnover today they’re making the analogous error. They claim to be hunting for the genetic element of wisdom, and I’m sure most of them believe that’s what they’re really doing. They aren’t, of course. What they’re on the track of is the 200-plus IQ. And intelligence and wisdom aren’t the same.”

He clenched his fists. “The prospect terrifies me! They must be stopped. Somehow and at any cost. But I’ve been struggling for six years to think of a way, hoping that the thirty million they lavished on me won’t go completely to waste, and I haven’t achieved one goddamned thing!”

“Are you held back by fear of being—well, punished?”

He started. “You’re sharp, aren’t you? I guess I am!”

“Just for opting out?”

“Oh, I’ve committed a slew of federal crimes. Used false identities, obtained a notary’s seal by fraud, entered forged data in the continental net … Just take it for granted they could find plenty of reasons for me to go to jail.”

“I’m surprised they let you get away in the first place.”

“But they don’t compel where they can persuade. They’re not stupid. They’re aware that one volunteer working his guts out on their behalf is worth a score of reluctant conscripts.”

Gazing past him into nowhere, she said, “I see. Thinking you were trustworthy, they gave you too much rope. So when you did escape, what did you do?”

He summarized his careers.

“Hm! If nothing else, you took in a broad cross-section of society. What made you settle for a post at G2S after all that?”

“I needed to gain access to some restricted areas of the net. In particular I had to find out whether my code was still valid. Which it was. But now that they’re closing on my identity at KC it’s high time I made one last use of it and rewrote myself again. It costs, of course, but I have some won Delphi tickets to collect on, and I’m sure I can adopt a well-paid profession for the time being. Don’t they go big for mystical things out here? I can run computerized horoscopes, and I can offer gene counseling—I think you can do that in California without a state license—and … Oh, anything that involves use of a computer terminal.”

She gave him a level look.

“But you’re in a paid-avoidance area,” she said.

“Hell, so I am!” Suddenly he felt very much alone, unspeakably vulnerable. “Does the avoidance go deep? I mean even if you can’t use any public phone to tap the net, do they forcibly exclude computers?”

“No, but you have to make special application to get time. And there’s more cash in circulation than anywhere else on the continent, and veephone service is restricted: you can’t dial out to the rest of the country, you have to cable and ask to be called back. Things like that.”

“But if I can’t rewrite myself, what am I going to do?” He was on his feet, shaking.

“Sandy!” She rose also, confronting him with a glare. “Have you never tried to outface the enemy?”

“What?” He blinked at her.

“I get the impression that every time one of your schemes went wrong, you abandoned it—and the identity that went with it—and switched to something else. Maybe that’s why you’ve always failed. You’ve relied on this trick talent of yours to bail you out of trouble instead of seeing through what you started. The overload you’ve suffered today ought to be a warning to you. There’s a limit to the number of times you can revise your personality. There’s a limit to the load you can pile on your powers of reasoning. Your body just told you, loud and clear, you’ve gone too far at last.”

“Oh, shit …” His voice was full of misery. “In principle I’m certain you’re right. But is there any alternative?”

“Sure I have an alternative. One of the best things about a paid-avoidance area is you can still get manual cooking. I don’t know what it’s like here, but at Protempore it was delicious. We go find a good restaurant and a jug of wine.”