The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert
The red ball of the Survey Globe caught her eye, the egg of enormous power that did her bidding even now. She thought about Nourse, her many-times playmate. Playmate and toys.
“Will he die?” she asked. She turned to watch Svengaard.
“Not immediately,” Svengaard said. “But that final burst of hysteria … he’s done irreparable damage to his system.”
He grew aware that there were only muted moans and a very few controlled commands in the hall now. Some of the acolytes had rallied to help.
“I released Boumour and the Durants and sent a plea for more … medical help,” Calapine said. “There are a number of … dead … many injured.”
Dead, she thought. What an odd word to apply to an Optiman. Dead … dead … dead …
She felt then how necessity had forced her into a new kind of living awareness, a new rhythm. It had happened down there in a burst of memories that trailed through forty thousand years. None of it escaped her—not a moment of kindness nor of brutality. She remembered all the Max All-goods, Seatac … every lover, every toy … Nourse.
Svengaard glanced around at a shuffling sound, saw Boumour approaching with a woman limp in his arms. There was a blue bruise across her cheek and jaw. Her arms hung like sticks.
“Is this pharmacy outlet available?” Boumour asked. His voice held that chilled Cyborg quality, but there was shock in his eyes and a touch of horror.
“You’ll have to operate the board manually,” Svengaard said. “I keyed out the demand system, jammed the feedback.”
Boumour stepped heavily around him with the woman. How fragile she looked. A vein pulsed thickly at her neck.
“I must concoct a muscle relaxant until we can get her to a hospital,” Boumour said. “She broke her own arms—contramuscular strain.”
Calapine recognized the face, remembered they had disputed mildly about a man once—about a playmate.
Svengaard moved to Nourse’s right arm, continued massaging. The move brought the floor of the hall into view and the tumbril. Glisson sat impassively armless in his restraining shell. Lizbeth lay at one side with Harvey kneeling beside her.
“Mrs. Durant!” Svengaard said, remembering his obligation.
“She’s all right,” Boumour said. “Immobilization for the past few hours was the best thing that could’ve happened to her.”
Best thing! Svengaard thought. Durant was right: These Cyborgs are as insensitive as machines.
“Si-lence him,” Nourse whispered.
Svengaard looked down at the pale face, saw the broken veins in the cheeks, the sagging, unresponsive flesh. Nourse’s eyelids flickered open.
“Leave him to me,” Calapine said.
Nourse moved his head, tried to look at her. He blinked, having obvious trouble focusing. His eyes began to water.
Calapine lifted his head, slid under him until he rested on her lap. She began stroking his brow.
“He used to like this,” she said. “Go help the others, Doctor.”
“Cal,” Nourse said. “Oh, Cal … I … hurt.”
20
“Why do you help them?” Glisson asked. “I don’t understand you, Boumour. Your actions aren’t logical. What use is it to help them?”
He looked up through the open segment of the Survey Globe at Calapine sitting alone on the dais of the Tuyere. The lights of the interior played a slow rhythm across her face. A glowing pyramid of projected binaries danced on the air in front of her.
Glisson had been released from his shell of restraint, but he still sat on the tumbril, his arm connections dangling empty. A medicouch had been brought in for Lizbeth Durant. She lay on it with Harvey seated beside her. Boumour stood with his back to Glisson, looking up into the globe. His fingers moved nervously, clenching, opening. There was a streak of dried blood down his right sleeve. The elfin face held a look of puzzlement.
Svengaard came in from behind the globe, a slowly moving figure in the red shadows. Abruptly, the hall glared with light. The main globes had gone on automatically as darkness fell outside. Svengaard stopped to check Lizbeth, patted Harvey’s shoulder. “She will be all right. She’s strong.”
Lizbeth’s eyes followed him as he moved around to look into the Survey Globe. Svengaard’s shoulders sagged with fatigue, but there was a look of elation in his face. He was a man who’d found himself.
“Calapine,” Svengaard said, “that was the last of them going out to hospitals.”
“I see it,” she said. She looked up at the scanners, every one lighted. Somewhat more than half of the Optimen were under restraint—mad. Thousands had died. More thousands lay sorely injured. Those who remained watched their globe. She sighed, wondering at their thoughts, wondering how they faced the fact that all had fallen from the tight wire of immortality. Her own emotions confused her. There was an odd feeling of relief in her breast.
“What of Schruille?” she asked.
“Crushed at a door,” Svengaard said. “He’s … dead.” She sighed. “And Nourse?”
“Responding to treatment.”
“Don’t you understand what’s happened to you?” Glisson demanded. His eyes glittered as he stared up at Calapine.
Calapine looked down at him, spoke clearly, “We’ve undergone an emotional stress that has altered the delicate balance of our metabolism,” she said. “You tricked us into it. The evidence is quite clear—there’s no turning back.”
“Then you understand,” Glisson said. “Any attempt to force your systems back into the old forms will result in boredom and a gradual descent into apathy.”
Calapine smiled. “Yes, Glisson. We’d not want that. We’ve been addicted to a new kind of … aliveness that we didn’t know existed.”
“Then you do understand,” Glisson said and there was a grudging quality to his voice.
“We broke the rhythm of life,” Calapine said. “All life is immersed in rhythm, but we got out of step. I suppose that was the outside interference in those embryos—rhythm asserting itself.”
“Well then,” Glisson said, “the sooner you can turn things over to us, the sooner things will settle down into—”
“To you?” Calapine asked scornfully. She looked out into the quick contrasts of the hall’s glaring light. How black and white it all was. “I’d sooner condemn us all,” she said.
“But you’re dying!”
“So are you,” Calapine said.
Svengaard swallowed. He could see that the old animosities would not be suppressed easily. And he wondered at himself, a second-rater surgeon who had suddenly found himself as a doctor, ministering to people who needed him. Durant had seen that—the need to be needed.
“I may have a plan we could accept, Calapine,” Svengaard said.
“To you we will listen,” Calapine said, and there was affection in her voice. She studied Svengaard as he searched for words, remembering that this man had saved the lives of Nourse and many others.
We made no plans for the unthinkable, she thought, Is it possible that this nobody who was once a target for kindly sneers can save us? She dared not let herself hope.
“The Cyborgs have techniques for bringing the emotions into a more or less manageable stasis,” Svengaard said. “Once that’s done, I believe I know a way to dampen the enzymic oscillations in most of you.”
Calapine swallowed. The scanner-eye lights above her began to flash as the watchers signaled for her to let them into the communications channels. They had questions, of course. She had questions of her own, but she didn’t know that she could speak them. She caught a reflection of her own face in one of the prisms, was reminded of the look in Lizbeth’s eyes as the woman had pleaded from the tumbril.
“I can’t promise infinite life,” Svengaard said, “but I believe many of you can have many more thousands of years.”
“Why should we agree to help them?” Glisson demanded. There was a measuring quality in his voice, a hint of the querulous.
“You’re failures, too!
“Don’t shout at me!” Glisson snapped.
So they do have emotions, Svengaard thought. Pride … anger …
“Are you still suffering under the delusion that you’re in control of this situation?” Svengaard asked. He pointed to Calapine. “That one woman up there could still exterminate every non-Optiman on earth.”
“Listen to him, you Cyborg fool,” Calapine said.
“Let’s not be too free with that word ‘fool’,” Svengaard said. He stared up at Calapine.
“Watch your tongue, Svengaard,” Calapine said. “Our patience is not infinite.”
“Nor is your gratitude, eh?” Svengaard said.
A bitter smile touched her mouth. “We were talking about survival,” she said.
Svengaard sighed. He wondered then if the patterns of thought conditioned by the illusion of infinite life could ever be truly broken. She had spoken there like the old Tuyere. But her resiliency had surprised him before.
The outburst had touched Harvey’s fears for Lizbeth. He glared at Svengaard and Glisson, tried to control his terror and rage. This hall awed him with its immensity and its remembered bedlam. The globe towered over him, a monstrous force that could crush them.
“Survival, then,” Svengaard said.
“Let us understand each other,” Calapine said. “There are those among us who will say that your help was merely our due. You are still our captives. There are those who’ll demand you submit and reveal your entire Underground to us.”
“Yes, let us understand each other,” Svengaard said. “Who are your prisoners? Myself, a person who was not a member of the Underground and knows little about it. You have Glisson, who knows more, but assuredly not all. You have Boumour, one of your escaped pharmacists, who knows even less than Glisson. You have the Durants, whose knowledge probably goes little beyond their own cell group. What will you gain even if you milk us dry?”
“Your plan to save us,” Calapine said.
“My plan requires cooperation, not coercion,” Svengaard said.
“And it will only give us a continuation, not restore us to our original condition, is that it?” Calapine asked.
“You should welcome that,” Svengaard said. “It would give you a chance to mature, become useful.” He waved a hand to indicate their surroundings “You’ve frozen yourselves in immaturity here! You’ve played with toys! I’m offering you a chance to live!”
Is that it? Calapine wondered. Is this new aliveness a by-product of the knowledge that we must die?
“I’m not at all sure we’ll cooperate,” Glisson said.
Harvey had had enough. He leaped to his feet, glared at Glisson. “You want the human race to die, you robot! You! You’re another dead end!”
“Prattle!” Glisson said.
“Listen,” Calapine said. She began sampling the communications channels. Bits of sentences poured out into the hall:
“We can restore enzymic balance with our own resources!” … “Eliminate these creatures!” … “What’s his plan? What’s his plan?” … “Begin the sterilization!” … “ … his plan?” … “How long do we have it …” … “There’s no doubt we can …”
Calapine silenced the voices with a flick of a switch. “It will be put to a vote,” she said. “I remind you of that.”
“You will die, and soon, if we don’t cooperate,” Glisson said. “I want that fully understood.”
“You know Svengaard’s plan?” Calapine asked.
“His thought patterns are transparent,” Glisson said.
“I think not,” Calapine said. “I saw him work on Nourse. He manipulated a dispensary to produce a dangerous overdose of aneurin and inostol. Remembering that, I ask myself how many of us will die in the attempt to arrest this process we can all feel within ourselves? Would I have risked such an overdose upon myself? How does this relate to the excitement we feel? Will any of us, having tasted excitement, wish to sink back into a non-emotional … boredom?” She looked at Svengaard. “These are some of my questions.”
“I know his plan,” Glisson sneered. “Quell your emotions and implant an enzymic dispensary within each of you. Make Cyborgs of you.” A tight grin etched a line of teeth in Glisson’s face. “It’s your only hope. Accepting it, you will have lost to us at last.”
Calapine glared down at him, shocked.
Harvey was caught by the carping meanness in Glisson’s voice. His own schism from the Underground had always known the Cyborgs were too calculating and narrow-minded to be trusted with purely human decisions, but he had never before seen the fact so clearly demonstrated.
“Is that your plan, Svengaard?” Calapine demanded.
Harvey jumped up. “No! That’s not his plan!”
Svengaard nodded to himself. Of course! A fellow human, and a father would know.
“You pretend to know what I, a Cyborg, do not know?” Glisson asked.
Svengaard looked at Harvey with raised eyebrows.
“Embryos,” Harvey said.
Svengaard nodded, looked up at Calapine. “I propose to keep you continually implanted with living embryos,” he said. “Living monitors that will make you adjust to your own needs. You will regain your emotions, your … zest for life, this excitement you prize.”
“You propose to make of us living vats for embryos?” Calapine asked, wonder in her voice.
“The gestation process can be delayed for hundreds of years,” Svengaard said. “With proper hormone adjustment, this can be applied even to men. Caesarian delivery, of course, but it need not be painful … or frequent.”
Calapine weighed his words, wondering why she felt no disgust at the suggestion. Once she had felt disgust at the realization that Lizbeth Durant carried an embryo within her, but Calapine realized now her disgust had been compounded of jealousy. Not all the Optimen would accept this, she knew. Some would hope for a return to the old ways. She looked up at the globe’s telltales. No one had escaped the poisoning excitement, though. They would have to understand that everyone was going to die … sooner or later. Choice of time was all they had.
We didn’t have immortality after all, she thought, only the illusion. We had that, though … for eons.
“Calapine!” Glisson said. “You’re not going to accept this—this foolish proposal?”
The mechanical man is outraged at a living solution, she thought. She said, “Boumour, what do you say?”
“Yes,” Glisson said, “speak up, Boumour. Point out the illogicality of this … proposal.”
Boumour turned, studied Glisson, glanced at Svengaard, at the Durants, stared up at Calapine. There was a look of secret wisdom in Boumour’s pinched face. “I can still remember … how it was,” he said. “I … think it was better … before I … was changed.”
“Boumour!” Glisson said.
Hit him in his pride, Svengaard thought.
Glisson glared up at Calapine with mechanical intensity. “It’s not yet determined that we’ll help you!”
“Who needs you?” Svengaard asked. “You’ve no monopoly on your techniques. You’d save a little time and trouble, that’s all. We can find embryos.”
Glisson stared from one to the other. “But this isn’t the way it was computed! You’re not supposed to help them!”
The Cyborg fell silent, eyes glassy.
“Doctor Svengaard,” Calapine said, “could you give us elite, viable embryos such as the Durants’? You saw the arginine intrusion. Nourse believes this possible.”
“It’s possible,” Svengaard said. He considered. “Yes, it’s … probable.”
Calapine looked up at the scanners. “If we accept this offer,” she said, “we go on living. You feel it? We’re alive now, but we can remember a recent time when we weren’t alive.”
“We’ll help if we must,” Glisson said, and there was that carping tone in his voice.
&nbs
Calapine, reading on the Survey Globe’s wall the mounting pressure of a single question from her Optiman audience, set up the analogues for an answer. It came swiftly for the scanners to see, “This process could provide eight to twelve thousand years of additional life even for the Folk.”
“Even for the Folk,” Calapine whispered. They’d discover this, she knew. There could be no more Security now. Even the Survey Globe had been shown to have flaws and limits. Glisson knew it. She could tell this, reading his silent withdrawal down there. Svengaard certainly would realize it. Possibly even the Durants.
She looked at Svengaard, knowing what she had to do. It would be easy to lose the Folk in this moment, lose them completely.
“If it is done,” Calapine said, “it will be done for anyone who wishes it—Folk or Optiman.”
This is politics, she thought. This is the way the Tuyere would do it … even Schruille. Especially Schruille. Clever Schruille. Dead Schruille. She could almost hear him chuckling.
“Can it be done for the Folk?” Harvey asked.
“For anyone,” she said, and she smiled at Glisson, letting him see how she’d won. “I think we can put it to a vote now.”
Once more, she looked up at the scanners, wondering if she’d gauged her people correctly. Most of them would see what she’d done, of course. But there’d be some clinging to the hope they could restore complete enzymic balance. She knew better. Her body knew. But some might choose to try that dangerous course back to boredom and apathy.
“Green for acceptance of Doctor Svengaard’s proposal,” she said. “Gold against.”
Slowly, then with cumulating speed, the circle of scanner lights changed color—green … green … great washes of it with only here and there a dot or pocket of gold. It was a more overwhelming acceptance than she’d expected and this made her edgy, suspicious. She trusted her voting instincts. Overwhelming acceptance. She consulted the Globe’s instruments, read the presentation of the answer: “The Cyborg can be maneuvered through its belief in the omnipotence of logic.”