Lord of All Things (14 page)

“Listen, since we’re talking business here,” Adamson said when the girl with the overbite had vanished again, “I have a project in the works right now. It’s kind of a working group, but at the national level. We have people from Caltech, NASA, Carnegie Mellon, all that…Anyway, it’s called Robot 21, and we’re trying to come up with a strategic plan for the future of robot technology. Laying down the ground rules we should follow. Nothing quite as simple as Asimov’s laws, but something along those lines. Since that seems to be what you’re working on right now, do you want to join the team?”

He was smart, this guy. Though he hadn’t come straight out and said that one day their work would be known as Adamson’s Laws of Robotics, you could be sure that’s what would happen.

“To be honest, no,” Hiroshi replied.

“What? Why not?”

“I’ve heard about your group. And I’ve read the working papers you posted to the Net.” Hiroshi smiled softly. “I’m sorry, but you guys are barking up the wrong tree. What you call the future of robotics is really its past.”

Bill Adamson couldn’t have looked more stunned if Hiroshi had punched him in the gut. “What do you mean by that?” he asked. The frost was definitely back now.

“Just keep your eyes on me; you’ll see what I mean,” Hiroshi told him boldly. “It’s quite clear to me where things have to go next. I’ve been wondering for years why nobody else has had the same idea.” He raised his empty glass. “I have to go get another drink. Good talking to you.”

Hiroshi turned and left. He could feel Adamson’s gaze upon him as he walked away. The man was staring daggers at him.

“Man!” Rodney exclaimed. “What was that about? Demonstration class in how to make an enemy for life?”

All Hiroshi said was, “If he’s as much of a hotshot as everyone believes, he should prove it.”

If you were looking for a place to go slumming, the Epsilon Omega frat house was not a bad choice. Whenever Bennett had had enough of the luxury and unbearable good manners of the world he had been born into, he snuck off here. Epsilon Omega was not a fraternity that instilled lifelong pride in its members—it didn’t get donations from former brothers and didn’t have its own tie; it was a frat for those who had been turned down everywhere else but still needed a cheap roof over their head and somebody to copy assignments from. And their morals were just as lax as their membership standards. The things that happened at their parties would have been unimaginable anywhere else. This was still the only place where Bennett had slept with three women at once. Another time, a chemistry student had handed round some stuff that had totally blown his mind—Bennett had never tripped like that before.

The frat house was a wreck out on the edge of town, incredibly far from all the faculty buildings and lecture halls, but also a good distance from any neighbors who might complain about the noise. The fraternity brothers were fond of wacky color combinations—most of the rooms were painted in black and purple—but not the least bit fond of repairs. A pane was missing in the fanlight over the front door, and as far as Bennett could remember it had been missing last year as well.

Despite all that, his evening was not going so great. A girl had given him a blow job down in the basement to a soundtrack of Motörhead and Metallica, but she hadn’t been particularly good at it. She had taken some kind of pill and was giggling away like crazy but hadn’t let him into her panties. He hadn’t even been able to get a finger in. She had a pretty good pair of boobs, but she hadn’t let him touch those either. Well what the hell? He wasn’t going home tonight until he had dipped his wick somewhere. Which was why he was working on a new girl at the moment, although over the course of an evening the drinks they served here made it pretty hard to concentrate.

“Where was I?” he asked, putting his arm around her neck.

“You were just explaining why you’re studying anthropology,” she said, letting him.

They were lying on a sofa built of sandbags behind the bar. Even when you were sober, it was pretty difficult to get up from it, and the light was suitably low over in this corner. The Epsilon Omega guys called it “the beaver trap.”

“Ah yes. Of course. Anthropology. The study of mankind.” He looked her over. She had a wild hairdo, a kind of raging lion’s mane that was probably meant to distract from the fact she was pretty skinny and barely had any tits to speak of. But he wasn’t after tits this evening, not anymore. Whatever else she may or may not have, she had a pussy, and that was what mattered.

“Do you know what the amazing thing is when you study anthropology?” he went on, deciding that a guy wasn’t really drunk if he could still say a word like
anthropology
. “How little we really know. Your average Joe just wouldn’t believe it. Sure, there are a whole load of theories. But theories is all they are. Stories. When it comes to hard facts, the kind of thing that could convince a jury—pretty near nothing.”

“Really?” she said. Was she getting bored? For a moment he thought so, but then he decided he must be mistaken; girls never got bored when James Michael Bennett was around. He looked at her again. What was her name? Ah yes, Belinda. Nice name. Kind of rare.

“Belinda,” he cooed, looking deep into her eyes. “That’s such a beautiful name, you know that? And so unusual.”

“That’s the third time you’ve said that.”

He shut up, flabbergasted. Really? He wasn’t sure what he’d said by now. Whatever. Didn’t matter.

“I could say it all night,” he said insistently. “It’s such an unusual name. Belinda—a name like that tastes good on the tongue.” He flicked his tongue out from his lips for a moment to show her what he meant.

She laughed. “Okay, so you study anthropology because there’s not much to study. Did I get you right?”

“No, no.” Where on earth did she get that idea? If there was one thing that women shouldn’t try, it was logic.

“Because we know so very little,” he told her earnestly, “that must mean there’s a whole lot of research still to be done, don’t you see? Fundamental work. And it means anything is still possible.” He shuffled closer and put his mouth close to her face. It smelled good. “And there’s something else as well, something I have to whisper in your ear. It’s kind of politically incorrect. Extremely.”

He was playing her, of course. The music drowned out everything in the room, some British band that sounded like buzz saws on steel; the two of them could have been shouting at the top of their voices and nobody would have overheard them. But women loved it when you whispered in their ear. It got them hot. And flat-chested Belinda was ready to get hot.

She giggled. “That tickles.”

“The truth, my dear Belinda, is not democratic. Truth cares only about facts, evidence, solid proof. Truth cares whether the questions we ask can truly be answered.” He came still closer to her ear, close enough to lick, and carried on. “The white race is descended from Cro-Magnon man. Everybody agrees on that. However, I suspect there’s more to it. It doesn’t fit today’s orthodoxies, but I strongly suspect that Cro-Magnon man was not descended from
Homo erectus
but represents a much older lineage in its own right.
Homo erectus
was merely the ancestor of the other races.” He chuckled. “The white race…sounds like Ku Klux Klan stuff, doesn’t it? But you mustn’t think I’m a racist. I’m a scientist. Let’s say the Caucasians then, which means the same thing, but it’s a word we’re allowed to use. Crazy old world, huh? Taboos everywhere. No wonder we’re not making any progress.”

It was also proving harder than he had thought to make progress with Belinda. Why was she so tense? He wasn’t doing anything to her, wasn’t even touching her. Except for his arm around her neck.

“If you look at world history,” he went on, “the fact is that all the greatest achievements have been made by Caucasians. Technology. Science. Empires. Landing on the moon…”

“Two World Wars,” Belinda added. “Environmental havoc. Atom bombs. Global warming.”

“I never mentioned morality,” Bennett protested. “I said great achievements.”

“So what about the Great Wall of China?” she asked. “What about the pyramids? Or Machu Picchu?”

She understood him. At last. It was good when a woman understood what a man was saying. Although there was something a little odd about her examples. He couldn’t quite think what at the moment but figured it wasn’t important.

“Great achievements,” he repeated. “That’s it. The Caucasians have some gift for greatness, while the other races—or let’s call them ethnic groups…okay, other ethnic groups live more in harmony with nature instead, more simply. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just saying it’s a difference. And differences are there to be explained. That’s what science is for.”

He looked at her. There was desire in her glittering eyes, no question. He could see such things.

“And me, dear Belinda. I have a gift for greatness, too,” he told her. “And I have a hypothesis that you may have caused it.” He took her hand and put it on the fly of his pants. “I think we should subject this to scientific study. Let’s go upstairs and see if one of the labs is free. We may achieve great things.”

She smiled. Dear Belinda. “I have to go somewhere real quick,” she said.

He watched her go and felt a further stirring behind his zipper. Pretty good ass. Almost made up for the small tits. He picked up his drink and tipped it down his throat in one go. Damn good stuff, and crazy-cheap prices. Aimed fair and square at the normal clientele here.

The next thing Bennett knew, someone was shaking him awake, and when he prized his eyelids open, it was unpleasantly bright. And a voice said, “Good morning, champ. Time to go home.”

At some point they had just given up looking and gotten on with the party. Partying, it seemed, meant standing around with people they barely knew and talking about stuff that barely mattered. And drinking alcohol at the same time.

Hiroshi decided it was an interesting experience. All the same, he steered clear of the hard stuff and stuck with beer, since he doubted it would remain an interesting experience if he lost his self-control. Besides, he didn’t understand how anybody could like whiskey.

A little before midnight he was standing with a group watching from the roof terrace as the alumni left. Some of them were well advanced in years, and they tottered down the front steps, chattering away, laughing fit to burst, and visibly unsteady on their feet. A line of limousines had pulled up. A knot of freshmen was bringing out overcoats and other belongings for the honored guests, opening car doors, and otherwise making sure the dear old souls got away in good order.

Rodney had finally found a girl who was willing to listen to him explain the Fermi paradox. The two of them were sitting on one of the very few comfortable seats in a corner of the terrace, paying no attention to what was going on down below.

“Enrico Fermi,” Rodney explained, waving his hands as he spoke, “was an Italian atom physicist who fled the Nazis and came to America. He won the Nobel Prize, so he was generally considered to be a smart guy. And he was thinking about the alien question more than fifty years ago. Imagine that. I mean, that shows it’s not just a hobby horse for wackos, right?”

The girl giggled, but in a friendly way. Hiroshi watched the two of them for a moment. He would have been willing to bet good money Rodney had already buttonholed everyone in Boston with his theories. Looked like he was wrong. The girl was kind of plump. She had a mop of messy hair, and she would have looked better in some kind of flowing Indian robe than in the tight jeans and skintight top she had on, but Hiroshi thought she looked nice nevertheless. Cuddly. And she could make a good match for Rodney.

“So, Fermi said all of this back then. Given how large the universe is—with hundreds of billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, all of which possibly have planets—it’s likely for simply statistical reasons that there are other life-forms out there like us. But then he went on to ask, if that’s really the case and aliens exist, then why aren’t they here?”

“They live too far away, is that it?” asked the girl, wide-eyed.

There were still five cars downstairs waiting for the last gray-haired passengers standing in front of the open doors, unable to tear themselves away from one another’s company. Meanwhile, fraternity brothers were already carrying the parts of a drum kit up the stairs into the great hall, along with loudspeakers, cables, and mic stands.

“Now this party’s really gonna get started!” whooped someone standing next to Hiroshi.

Hiroshi wondered what it would look like when the party got started. He had no idea. Was everybody going to strip naked and indulge in pagan orgies? Was this when the drugs showed up? He felt rather like an alien himself, a man who fell to Earth to do an anthropological field survey.

Over in the candlelight, he heard Rodney chuckle. “Yes, well of course they live a long way away. But that’s the whole point. Fermi saw it like this: if the aliens are anything like us, then one day they will develop space travel. And if they develop space travel, then we have to think things through and consider what is theoretically possible and what isn’t.”

“Like in
Star Trek
?” the girl asked. “Warp speed and all that?”

“Well, that’s probably going to stay beyond the realm of possibility. You can’t travel faster than light. But that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t fly to another star. It just wouldn’t be with starships like we see in the movies. Maybe we could hollow out an asteroid, turn it into a generation ship, and set out on a journey lasting several centuries. Maybe the ones who finally leave the solar system one day will be some religious sect, the Pilgrim Fathers of the future—who knows?”

“I get it. And this Fermi guy figured the aliens would do the same thing?”

“Exactly. Then he calculated how quickly they could get from star to star. The calculations are just fascinating. I’ll have to run them by you in detail when we have time. Anyway, he calculated that even if it took centuries to get from one star to the next, the whole of the Milky Way would still be settled within a very short time compared with the age of planet Earth, for instance. He said that if the aliens had reached our stage of development even as recently as one hundred thousand years ago, then they would be everywhere by now. Right at our doorstep.” Rod pointed up to the sky, where the stars were just visible despite all the lamps, party lanterns, and spotlights. “Instead of which, silence. Not a peep. We send out all our signals and we’re not getting any answer.”