Tomorrow’s World (28 page)

“What about you?” he asked me.

“I had what she had,” I told him, then started convulsively swallowing, as if fighting a losing battle to hold back a copious torrent. No doubt fearing he could end up wearing my breakfast all over his neatly pressed coveralls, the Pareto retreated inside the airlock.

“Bad luck,” the professor's wife said as the airlock doors closed.

Although I wasn't throwing up, I felt as sick as Paula.

“
I'M SORRY
,” I
SAID TO
P
AULA AS WE LEFT THE JETPORT.

“What for?”

“This wouldn't be happening if I'd accepted Doug MacDougall's death at face value.”

“You were right not to, so there's no need to apologize.”

I couldn't fault Paula's logic, but that didn't stop me regretting my actions. “If we're right about all this, not boarding the flight has just earned us a stay of execution rather than a reprieve,” I told her. “The Ecosystem will make another move, and it'll be against you as well as me because of the probability—” I'd never hated that word more—”that you know as much about Doug's death as I do.”

“I know,” she said. “Look, Ben, this isn't your fault any more than it was Doug MacDougall's.”

We stood there between the ghostly ruins of the old city and the gray blocks of the community. I didn't know which way to turn. Ironically, given that I'd uncovered the whole mess in the first place and had spent so long trying to convince Paula there was more to it than met the eye, I was the one who went into denial. “Do you think we might be reading too much into all of this?” I said. “Could we be inventing a conspiracy that doesn't really exist?”

“That possibility's looking ever more remote. And if the Faradays and the two doctors don't come back from Niagara safe and sound…”

“I still don't really understand what's going on,” I said, not worrying about losing face. The point-scoring games we used to play belonged to another lifetime. “I can see why the Ecosystem viewed Doug as a threat, but surely what Heather Adams is on the verge of uncovering is for the greater good.”

“For the good of mankind, not the Ecosystem.”

“Aren't they one and the same?”

“They were, but it looks like the Ecosystem program got corrupted somewhere along the way.”

“How could that happen? The whole thing about the Ecosystem is that it's incapable of acting out of self interest.”

“Not any more, apparently. It might be possible to believe there's another explanation for MacDougall's death, and that your number coming up on the lottery is a coincidence, and Heather Adams' number coming up as she's on the point of making her breakthrough is another coincidence—but that still leaves the professor, and I can't believe his number came up by chance.”

That was how caught up I'd been in our plight; it had slipped my mind that the man with the pipe had apparently answered one of the most profound questions ever asked. “How did he do it?” I asked. “How did he prove the existence of God?”

“By taking a new approach to the ultimate cosmological mystery: namely, the fact there's not enough matter in existence to hold the universe together.”

I don't have a great grasp of science, but I remembered enough physics from my schooldays to have a rough idea what she was talking about. Matter exerts gravity, and apparently there isn't nearly enough of it to stop the cosmos from catastrophically flying apart. In other words, the universe shouldn't exist. The discrepancy has led to decades of postulating about ‘dark matter' and the hunt for exotic particles, but they've never been found.

“Faraday thinks he knows the answer to the puzzle,” Paula said. “He thinks what's holding the universe together is the will of God. If the jetliner goes down, it suggests the Ecosystem has come to the same conclusion and feels threatened by the notion of word getting out that there is a greater power than its logic.”

I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams or worst nightmares that getting the empty syringe from Doug MacDougall's flat analyzed would lead to all of this.

“Put the pieces together and they make a compelling case,” Paula said. “First of all, the Ecosystem felt threatened by MacDougall's observation about
immaculata solaris
because it undermined The Search for Meaning—and man's reliance on computer processing power to further that search and have any hope of reaching a conclusion…

“Then it was threatened by you when you showed signs of finding out what MacDougall had learned.”

“And Heather Adams?”

“Her enzyme discovery takes away the need for genetic engineering, so reducing the Ecosystem's ability to create life in its own image.

“Then there's the professor, offering proof of the existence of a higher power; a power that people—Names, anyway—might start putting their faith in, rather than putting their trust in the Ecosystem.”

“I still don't see how the Ecosystem could go from pure logic to this.”

“Maybe all these years of exposure to the most powerful expressions of human thought and feeling in The Search for Meaning corrupted its program in some way, warped its logic and imbued it with the very human characteristics it was analyzing—things like the desire to be needed, to feel important, to create life in its own image.”

A piece I hadn't even realized belonged to the puzzle fell into place: why there seemed to be more Paretos than there used to be.

Other things followed, like the possibility Slo-Mo and Rush had been formulated by the Ecosystem rather than by a naughty lab technician. Given that Numbers would avoid something which gave them pleasure but destroyed them, and Names lacked the logic to resist such temptation, the drugs would be an ideal way to deplete the pool of illogical thinkers.

And then there was the notion that the author of
The Pet Shop
had been killed for writing a story that was too close to the truth, or simply offended the Ecosystem's sensibilities. Maybe Tim McCann started writing the story on his computer, like he'd always done before. The Ecosystem didn't like what he was writing and wiped it out, so he started writing with pencil on paper in an Olden Days diary—and never finished because the Ecosystem sent a Pareto to wipe him out.

Just as it would send one to wipe
us
out, if we were right about all this.

“What are we going to do, Paula?” I asked.

“If the Faradays and the doctors don't come back from Niagara we've got to assume we're next on the list that started with MacDougall. That leaves us with a choice of fight or flight.”

Which meant a quick death in the community or a lingering death Outside.

Paula put it in more clinical terms, but it came down to the same thing: “Our chances of being able to live for any length of time Outside aren't great, but they're a whole lot better than the odds of beating the Ecosystem and the Paretos who embody it.”

“You think we should make a run for it?”

“I don't think we have much choice,” she said. “We better start preparing ourselves mentally and physically for life Outside, Ben.”

I nodded, unable to speak. You tend to think of your future in terms of years. It's not easy to suddenly be confronted by the knowledge that what's left of your life can be measured in days and weeks at best, hours and minutes at worst. Yet Paula's words and manner suggested she'd already made the adjustment. She seemed so very different from me as she stood there weighing probabilities, calculating odds and formulating options that I wondered if things could ever have worked out between us, even if we'd had the luxury of time.

“We should fill a couple of packs with anything that'll be of help on the Outside, so we're ready to make a run for it if the jetliner doesn't come back from Niagara,” she said. “Agreed?”

I nodded. Things weren't turning out like they do in books and movies, where the strong hero takes charge when the going gets tough, and adversity draws you closer to whoever you're facing it with.

It wasn't turning out like that at all.

We headed up the deserted street toward Haven Nine. I looked over my shoulder every ten or twenty steps, expecting to see a Pareto in pursuit, and each time we approached a street corner my pulse quickened and my steps slowed in expectation of an ambush.

“Relax,” Paula said. “They won't come at us in the open, where we can take them out with our knockdowns, or in a public place where it'll cause a scene. They'll either wait until we're sleeping, like they did with MacDougall, or make it look like an accident—sending a lift plummeting out of control, something like that.”

“Remind me to take the stairs from now on.”

“Something tells me I won't have to.”

“I'm not being paranoid, they really are out to get me.”

She managed a smile, which was more than I could have done if someone had just cracked such a feeble joke.

A small food distribution freighter approached us. I reached for my knockdown and didn't take my hand off the butt until the hoverjet was past. I only realized I'd been holding my breath when it came out in an audible sigh of relief.

When we got to Haven Nine I half expected my card to set off an alarm as I inserted it into the reader, but the doors opened without a sound.

I gave the elevator a hateful look, as if it had already tried to kill me, and made my way over to the stairs with Paula at my side. “Your place or mine?” I asked. I'd always wanted to say that to her but hadn't imagined doing it in circumstances quite like this.

“We'll go to your apartment first,” she said. “You can pack a holdall, then we'll head up to mine and I'll do the same. It's best if we stick together.”

That was fine by me. I'd never felt less like being alone.

The first thing I did when we got to my flat was ditch the camera from my daypack. Taking photos didn't seem all that important any more. If I pointed my camera and said ‘smile' to Paula after a couple of days' scavenging in the ruins I was pretty sure she would bring out her knockdown and take a shot at me before I could take a shot of her.

I packed a spare coverall and some changes of underwear, then looked around the apartment for anything else that might be of use Outside.

“Better leave plenty room for food and water,” Paula said. “We might as well max out our credit cards at the store before we head off.”

I nodded, and was on my way to join her at the door when I remembered something we might be very glad of a little way down the line.

Paula watched curiously as I rummaged in my desk drawer. When I found what I was looking for I slipped it in my pocket before she could see what it was.

“What's that?” she asked.

“Just something we might need later on.”

“Travis…”

Before she could press me further I walked past her, slotted my card, and did an ‘after you' to show her out the door.

When we were halfway down the corridor I couldn't resist stopping again and pretending I'd forgotten something else.

Paula tutted loudly and didn't see the funny side when I said, “Just kidding.”

“I think we'll end up going our separate ways within a couple of days, Travis,” she told me.

“I think you'll come to treasure my impish sense of humor,” I told her.

This was more like it: laughing in the face of adversity. I'd like to think it was a natural resilience shining though, but I suppose it was simply resignation setting in.

“Isn't humor supposed to be funny?” Paula asked.

I couldn't think of a witty retort, and force of habit had me reaching up to rub my nose, like I used to do when she bested me. I stopped myself just in time, covering my mouth and faking a cough because I couldn't think what else to do.

“Now
that
was funny,” Paula said, reading me like a book.

We laughed together, which was fine, but it would have been even better if we hadn't both been laughing at me.

I thought I'd packed quickly but Paula put me to shame. She didn't even pause to look around her apartment. I did. It was my first time in her flat. It held a big surprise, in the form of a well-filled bookcase. Most Numbers don't feel the need to collect anything. Clutter is anathema to them, and once they've finished with something they discard it. Besides, when it comes to books they prefer the electronic versions, regarding the old printed editions with disdain. It's as if they find the yellowed paper too unclean to touch, the foxing too distracting, the taint of damp and mould too unpleasant. Those things aren't outweighed by the satisfaction of being able to hold something in your hands, as they are for us; of turning pages and listening to the sound they make, as if the words are being whispered down the years by whoever wrote them; of feeling the draught from the moving paper and smelling with it something other than the antiseptic sterility of the haven.

So it came as a surprise to see a bookcase in Paula's apartment.

I was even more surprised when I saw the books that filled it. Numbers prefer hard fact to fiction, however Paula's bookcase had works by the Brontes and Jane Austen. There was
Message in a Bottle
and
True Believer
by Nicholas Sparks, and
The Bridges of Madison County
and
A Thousand Country Roads
by Robert James Waller. Each had no doubt been bought at great cost from The Book Store, because Perfect Paula hadn't been to the old city before our trip to the library. Looking at those books I realized how much of an act she'd been putting on when she played the ice maiden. I could only guess how hard it must have been for her.

Paula came out of the bedroom and I straightened up guiltily. In a bid to make up for my prying I said, “Do you want me to carry some books for you in my pack?”