The Chromosome Game (3 page)

‘Any idea how?’

‘Not at the present time. We’ll look into it. Then come back to you.’

‘Roger and thanks.’

*

It is a calm, sweet-summer day. The surface of the Mediterranean, though encroaching tidally upon the valley, is flat and polished, like a lake. The old chateau, seeming only slightly more derelict than it had been in the Twentieth Century, towers above the tide. In the gully, birds fly silently. These are Atlantic Gulls. Larger than the common gull which is now extinct, they are immensely strong and capable of long range flight. Structurally they are like tankers, for on close examination it can be seen that they have humps — like camels, but streamlined. The humps contain tissue that can store a fluid derived from fresh water and food. So, were it not for their wings, they would appear squat.

It would be hard to imagine them without wings, for these are magnificent. As if nature has somehow copied Man’s less destructive brand of invention, they are clearly delta-shaped and the feathers are so geometrically integrated that both leading and trailing edges seem absolutely clean … pure aerofoils designed for high altitudes and impressive speeds. Evolution has, even in this short period, sorted out the basic requirements for covering the huge distances that separate sources of sustenance. To overcome the endurance problem set by headwinds, you must have plenty of speed to improve your side of the equation; yet to find jetstreams that will aid long-distance flight, you must have altitude, excellent climbing power, an efficient power-to-weight ratio, the necessary capacity for fuel. The Atlantic Gull has stolen from high radiation levels the ability to evolve very rapidly. After three hundred years it has become a formidable contender for any trophy.

Now, a few of them circle lazily over the bay as the uppermost structure of a submerged monster breaks surface. It looks like a green and brown whale of enormous proportions; for through the cool, clear water can be seen, shimmering, the bulbous outline of the rest of it. It is barely moving.

The weeds have slowed it to a velocity of less than a metre a minute. It seems motionless; except that in beaching itself it very gradually shows more of its slimy upper surfaces.

Kasiga
has berthed herself in the ravine below Carross.

*

She is not a dead ship. She never was. Even at the time when Hawkridge and Slazenger were torpedoed from her bowels she was alive. She was a hoaxer, a Chinese puzzle afloat. And even if her manufacturers gave a moment’s clear thought to the true chances for her living passengers to survive, the victims were human camouflage, a mere excuse for the perverting of gigantic funds.

For those among the junior gods of the universe who are not all that familiar with the more startling peccadilloes of Homo Sapiens, it is worth pointing out that even senior gods remain baffled by the more explosive traits of this species. For even looking back objectively through the three intervening centuries it is still hard to understand the mind of the nuclear physicist. Perhaps, because it was science itself that split the atom, this innocently academic pursuit provided the incubator for split personality as well. For the innocence that prevailed in the Cavendish Laboratory abruptly lost its virginity over Hiroshima; and the pulverization of this planet owed itself as much to the human chain linking Cambridge with Japan as it did to the chain reaction that sparked it. And the chain did not stop there.

There had been people called ‘professors’, but even Webster’s Dictionary failed to define the essence of a professor’s mind. In a civilization wherein the Prize for Peace was named after the inventor of high-explosives, no dictionary could hope to grapple with the warped logic inherent in so many of its more significant words.

Such a breed of men could not but bring catastrophe on themselves but they were not equipped to keep this catastrophe private. While uttering sombre warnings to the rest of humanity about the appalling consequences to humanity of all they devised, they went on devising it with a zealous dedication seldom reflected in any other field. They made peace with themselves and war with the world. Thus they were capable of any deceit as long as it was labelled with an innocuous-sounding mnemonic … P.E.A.C.E. would do excellently for such a disguise. Spelt out, it really read ‘Plutonium Electronically Activated for Catastrophic Extinction’. It was a great success.

A group of such men of science as these approached, in their day, the more senile among high government officials and issued glum warnings. They were in a strong position to do so. The momentum for such warnings originated in the laboratories they so gleefully supervised between doomtide gatherings.

During these gatherings they proposed the building of
Kasiga
— a rich man’s Noah’s Ark.

At first their reception was cool, mostly because the venture was costly. But after a few more years of meddling with megadeath they began to make headway; until an organization called NATO, faced with its equally ferocious counterpart in the USSR, came to the curious conclusion that part of the expenditure reserved for the Defence budget should go toward an urgent exodus from the predictable outcome of their diligence. In devising ‘Defence’ weapons they made a hasty departure obligatory.

Since the design for the resulting lifeboat was vested in experts who were even enabled to keep secrets from each other over the details of the same ship — because its method of construction was modular — it wasn’t hard for scientists and their technological flunkies to come up with a vessel that was so elegantly two-faced that even its Commander didn’t know how many decks there were. Like Hawkridge in his final search for the fruits of survival, the Commander — who died much earlier from something that must have amounted to terminal confusion — had been wont to stride along the deepest accessible deck, during his tours of inspection, thinking, no doubt, that all that lay below his feet were the pressure-tanks without which a submarine cannot be defined as such.

The detailed, illuminated blueprints in the huge control centre near the bridge of the ship obediently flashed many a light to disclose the state of the watertight compartments the Commander actually knew about. What these picturesque displays omitted were interesting details relating to the ship’s sub-structure.

To all intents and purposes,
Kasiga
had a false bottom.

*

While beached motionless for some twenty years, not so very far from the former site of Nice Airport,
Kasiga
appeared to be as dead as any other corpse. Although automatic loudspeaker announcements continued to address her desolate, fungus-infested torso, no sign of life — animate or synthesized — prowled her corroded decks. All that Hawkridge had once known of her had decayed. It would have seemed to him impossible that mechanically-produced voices could still be reverberating so chillingly throughout her decks.

Possibly, Hawkridge had heard of a ‘startime clock’ — the rather grandiose nickname for the Caesium Clock … originally designed for Greenwich Observatory in the 1960s. A modified version of this expensive piece of equipment was just one small part of the total content of Deck ZD-One.

But then, Hawkridge knew nothing of the existence of this sealed part of the ship. He knew nothing of the technology that made it possible for so huge a section of a vessel to be kept corrosion-free for a period of over three hundred years. He knew nothing of the elaborate ingenuity that went into absorbing condensation, maintaining perfect air, perpetuating the process of each successive fuel-cell triggering off the next, just before the dying fuel-cell ceased to function. Hawkridge knew nothing of the layers of protective coating that rendered Deck ZD-One an hygienic, sterilized monument to Man. He didn’t know; and nor did anyone else — by then.

Ironically, the one professor who thought he might get aboard in time — and thereby change all that
Kasiga
meant in terms of the far-distant future — had been beheaded by the blades of a helicopter caught in a gust. Minutes before he was due to fly to the classified location where
Kasiga
lay, submerged and waiting, the man with the can-opener died with his secret.

So, since Hawkridge didn’t know of the existence of Deck ZD-One, he could hardly be expected to have known its purpose. Had he done so, he himself might have been puzzled. For Hawkridge’s view of learned professors was a perceptive one. He knew of their ambivalence, the sting in the tail of super-knowledge that smouldered like a time-fuse in back of creative discovery. He must surely have been enlightened on that point once he and Slazenger sluiced themselves out of
Kasiga
. Did he have an inkling of what lay so deep below? Is that why he made that last desperate search for supplies? Could it be that Hawkridge
sensed
that the split-personality of
Kasiga’s
architects had been expressed in two entirely separate ideals? — the destructive element dedicated to the futile preservation of a few human lives for a hopelessly short time; the creative one channelled into an unknown area of inspired activity? … And was he, in his death-throes, searching for proof?

He certainly suspected something. Was it that?

It can’t be known.

And yet, deep in the sump of the submarine and hermetically sealed from those decks which Hawkridge knew so well, was the hidden arena called Deck ZD-One.

And here there existed not the numbed, cadaverous atmosphere of a luxurious catafalque, but a strangely tranquil sanctuary which would have posed to Hawkridge the greatest enigma of all.

*

Deck ZD-One is silent but not eerie; deserted but not dead. The peace that seems to prevail within it has nothing to do with the eternity of a shrine.

Something is trying to happen; and Time is holding its breath. Only the caesium clock, its green display glowing so dimly — barely reflected by the glossy tungsten-steel nearby — suggests that the flow of time is even feasible.

This startime clock indicates, with an accuracy correct to the nanosecond, the year, the date, the time. It must be so because it is driven by the natural decay-rate of Matter itself. Caesium is changing into other substances and the speed with which it does this cannot be altered, any more than the Universe of which it is a part can be deflected from the course of its prescribed lifetime as decreed by the total energy with which it began. Here is ‘Time’ as we understand it.

The startime clock completes the count-down:

A.D. 2293 FEB 2 2359 59

One second later the display changes:

A.D. 2293 FEB 3 0000 00

Right the other end of Deck ZD-One, a single green light glows faintly in the darkness.

The light is inset on the control console of a conventional computer; an ordinary hunk of hardware originating in the Twentieth Century, whose technology congealed in one transcontinental nuclear flash.

So the computer is a stupid thing; a dumb, bolted-together contraption which will simply do what it’s told, in obedience to the programs and software locked within it.

Now, upon the zero-impulse from the clock, it begins.

Minus Twelve

The Senior Interrogod said, ‘Stop the videotape there.’

The engineer complied and faded up the houselights of the small projection room. On intercom to the auditorium he said, ‘In any case, sir, we’re getting leakback. Somebody way back in the Twentieth Century knows what we’re doing. Probably calls it clairvoyance or ESP — something of that sort.’

The Interrogod said to a colleague, ‘Ironically the leakback will only reach them a fraction of a second before their holocaust.’

‘But they’ll know?’

‘They’ll know. Too late. They’ll know what we know — that everything blew … But it will come to them when they’ve virtually blown it.’ — in Space the future tense is retroactive.

‘We can’t use Red Shift?’

‘Not in this case. You know as well as I do we can’t stop what happened. No way.’ He called up to the engineer, ‘Ignore the leakback and run the tapes you have on Dollenburg.’

‘From which point?’

‘The sequence with his wife. You know the one?’

‘Sure.’

‘Then go straight to his critics … the Washington sequence. You have it up there? VT/047 if I recall it right.’

‘I have it and it’ll be ready laced-up on the other machine, sir. Just give me a cue and I’ll run it.’

‘That’s fine but hold it for a couple of minutes.’ The Interrogod turned to the Deputy-Administrator, Milky Way. About Dollenburg’s home life: How much is known?’

The Deputy Administrator replied expressionlessly, ‘In the words of our own Commander-in-Chief Trans-Spacial Command, his wife was a stunner.’

‘Yes, well I know all about the C-in-C’s appreciation of things temporal — not to say things carnal. Who was she?’ The Interrogod couldn’t suppress a hint of a grin. ‘No … Tell you what: Get the C-in-C on the intercom. Let’s have the description in his own godlike words …’ He snapped down a switch.

The instrument squawked back, ‘C-in-C here.’

‘Field-Marshall, I believe you have some personal impression of Professor David Dollenburg’s wife?

‘Which century we talking about?’

The Interrogod replied pointedly, ‘I have a feeling you know, General.’

Over the squawkbox the C-in-C could plainly be heard clearing his throat. ‘As a matter of fact, yes. I am just, ar, putting her face up on the screen now … Yes. A girl from Kuala Lumpur, originally. Moved to Great Britain when she was eight. Outstanding student — considering she had to make the switch from speaking her native Malaysian to English, apparently in seconds. Dollenburg met her while he was lecturing in the United Kingdom, where she was a medical student. Hair dark and sort of crunchy thick; eyes alert, humourous but discriminating; figure —’

‘— I’ll leave that part to you, General.’

‘Sure. Okay, she was twenty-three when they married. By then she was either still an intern or just qualified. Very caring person, and — to be honest — pretty damn sexy.’

‘Could we have her name, rather than your dispassionately Olympian responses?’

‘Ar, sure. Name of Mei Ling. Guess she couldn’t have been more than twenty-four — maybe twenty-five — when everything blew. Girl of very independent views — one reason no doubt why she shacked-up — that is to say, married — with Dollenburg, who wasn’t going to have his arm twisted by the CIA. Dollenburg was much older than the girl but it seems he was pretty good at it.’

‘At what, General?’

‘Ar, maintaining his independent views. Anything else?’

‘I think you’ve said enough. Thanks.’ The Interrogod let go of the switch. On the other circuit he said to the Engineer, ‘Okay, run the Dollenburg video right now.’

*

‘David. You can’t sit there all night. What are you gazing at, anyway? There’s nothing out there but stars.’

Dollenburg held her till it hurt. ‘Unfair, reading my mind … You’re right, of course. We’re liable to wind up a Supernova — on the button.’

She said, ‘David, I’ve been threatening a holiday for a long time. If you’re not careful you’ll find yourself sentenced to a fishing trip. And it just so happens I’m needed right here — at the hospital … where I won’t be able to massage that frown.’

‘I am trying to smile.’

‘You need to work on it.’

‘You do know what Huckman is planning?’

‘How could I miss it?’

‘If the plan itself is nuts, the execution of it will be even crazier in his hands. If these guys spent a little less of their time gazing at red buttons they wouldn’t risk being caught with their fly undone. The way they’re acting, stars really will be the only things out there — except we won’t be around to see them.’

‘He’ll never get this one past the President.’

‘There’s someone who can … My God, if every damn discovery anyone ever made is going to get bent they should use a firing squad on every scientist including me.’

‘I think you’re a little bit jealous of Huckman. He’ll get all the credit for every scrap of work you’ve done.’

‘He’s welcome to it if that’s his idea of “credit”. He can walk through Senate Committees and run rings around them till they don’t know dawn from dusk. He did it way back on the computer snarl-ups and walked clean away. Now you’ll have the privilege of seeing the same thing happen again. Memories in Washington are short.’

‘Yes … And what about this other line of research you’re onto? Does Huckman know about that, too?’

Dollenburg put on his professor’s face. ‘Scientists have to pretend to be sane, Mei. It’s bad enough being bugged by the FBI. I’ve no particular ambition to wind up in Colney Hatch.’

She said, ‘What you’re really implying — though wild horses wouldn’t get you to admit it — is that new ideas don’t sell.’

‘Okay, I admit it. Adam and Eve probably had to fight the entire Establishment just to convince people about screwing.’

‘It didn’t take you too long to convince me on that score.’

‘This is the wrong time to give me ideas.’

She said, suddenly, ‘I’ll bet Huckman can’t do it.’

‘Oh? That’s interesting. Well, you’re usually right. But is it relevant?

— There are plenty of fancy magazines he can get steamed up about. No amount of scientific porn can aid me in convincing my colleagues about the true meaning of Supernature. You should have seen the faces of those eminent gentlemen in London when I addressed the Royal Society. Heresies like mine just don’t make the Charts.’

‘They never did. History proved them wrong over and over but they never got the message. Not until it was too late … David, these intense magnetic fields you keep finding: are you any nearer to discovering why they’re there?’

‘I just know that other people who’ve detected them are scared out of their minds to talk about them. With monotonous regularity they find themselves explaining it all to a Shrink.’

‘You’re not afraid of shrinks. So why not write it up in
Scientific
American
and lay it on the line?’

‘Miss Mei Ling! How? — How do I put, in so many words, that … the hell, let’s try and write the lyric right now: ‘that because Mankind is at war with Nature, he can only expect Nature to hit back in a way too subtle for laboratory equipment to diagnose. Nature is beaming-out protest-rays and since these cannot be measured on a Geiger Counter direct, those who wish to bury their heads in the sand can ignore the less tangible means we have at our disposal to fill in the gaps …’ Crazy talk? … That’s just for starters. We’d go on something like this: ‘To those few who wish to know, the reply of Nature to the abuse perpetrated upon it is to send out signals which, though remote from Quantum Physics, do at least show that something is occurring’ … the word ‘occurring’ printed in nice, thick italics, don’t you see?’

‘And what
is
occurring?’

‘You want it straight?’

‘I want it straight.’

‘The wrath of God. You do see my problem? — Headline: Mad Professor Pursued by Clergyman Along Broadway. Text: Professor David Z. Dollenburg, having revived
Jesus
Christ
Superstar
in the Operating Theatre of New York Central Hospital, has somehow confused the score with Frankenstein. His magnetic personality — in more senses than one — has invoked a new sort of Monster which Dollenburg now sets to music in
Scientific
American
, to the consternation of stray cats, howling dogs and baying hounds. God, it appears, expresses his indigestion from one end of the Universe to the other by Magnetizing Things. For — Listen, folks! — God is allergic to everything from nuclear reactors to — yes, you’ve guessed it! — laser beams. Yeah, that’s right. Lasers. Better yet, God has put through a conference phonecall to his colleagues in other galaxies to drum up support. Why, the Indignation of Space-Time will crumble the very walls of Jericho at M.I.T …’ — Do I go on?’

She was silent for a long time. Silent and afraid. When she spoke, low-voiced and somehow remote, she asked, ‘And is God equal to the task?’

‘Don’t you know what he’s equal to?’

‘You’re saying E=Mc². Right from here to Malaysia to Eternity.’ Dollenburg turned to look at her, to admire her. He knew her to be unique. She made up for everything that, to him, was otherwise lost. ‘I very much fear we are soon to witness the deploying of Einstein’s formula to Zero Point — courtesy of mere mortals … You see, Mankind
knows
he’s as guilty as hell and like all people with the hidden, festering hatred — accumulated evil — Man can only step up his own appetite for destruction.’

‘I’ve never heard you so angry.’

‘It’s not my own anger that counts.’

‘Can’t God … or the Universal Powers, or whatever we choose to call Him … Can’t God stop it happening?’

‘Not if people just go on driving straight through red lights, like drunks on Seventh Avenue. The red lights are behind them, now. There’s no going back.’

‘Not like you to say there’s no hope.’

‘Did I say that?’

Mei nodded. ‘I see. Hence the —’

‘— the chromosome game. And Huckman, given his head — if that’s what you can call that mask of his — will turn it into just that. A game. Only played with a deck of wild jokers.’

‘Can he get past the White House?’

‘There’s no one to stop him now.’

‘That’s why they isolated you out?’

‘Me, along with a few others, yes.’

‘Who is Huckman’s man in the Administration?’

‘Ricardo.’

‘Does Ricardo have direct access to the President?’

‘He can get closer than Haldemann got to Nixon.’

‘But the House of Representatives —’

‘Damn
the House of Representatives! All they ever think of is what suits the next Elections! When they have time — between unseemly squabbles in the lobbies — to debate anything worth debating they cow-tow to the myth that anything with teeth can be passed-off as “Classified” — Hands off! CIA Eyes-Only! And, Mei, we should know.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes what?’

‘Yes come to bed.’

‘And just how bad can a bad angel be?’

‘You’re about to find out.’

*

Ricardo managed to gulp back his natural sycophancy as he waited, poised, in the most exclusive room in the United States.

He said, ‘Might I have your, ar, your reactions, sir? I mean, feasibility studies aside, is the timing right?’

‘I think it’s one hell of an idea! And the timing
is
right. Have you spoken about this to Dollenburg?’

‘There’s a problem area, Sir.’

‘Doesn’t realize the urgency?’

‘Not quite that.’

‘Quit stalling me, will you? Press conference, fifteen minutes from now. So there’s Dollenburg: he’s not the only problem area we’re going to hit.’

‘Chrissakes, you’re not intending to raise the
Kasiga
project with the press?’

‘What I’m raising with the press is the pile-up of Soviet strike-power. That’s more than enough for the next twenty newspaper editions. Hell, the Reds have broken every damn agreement on nukes we ever made.’

‘Steve, I hate to say this, but —’

‘— Sure, we did too. How could we avoid it? Can’t beat a royal flush with two of a kind … Leave that be. Go on about Dollenburg. One thing is for sure. We can’t go to this ball without Cinderella’s glass shoe, and right now Dollenburg’s big feet are the only ones that fit.’

‘Yeah, but Dollenburg’s a Jew. That’ll mean —’

‘Assorted races. That’ll be his price.’

‘You mean … In this case we have to pay it?’

‘Sure. So talk to him.’

‘Certainly not discussing anything like this on the phone.’

‘Use the red one.’

‘That’s Operations.’

‘Isn’t this? Go ahead, pick it up, my personal authorisation.’

‘Steve, how the hell do we justify it? — get the money?’