Dante's Equation Part 40

Pol got into the office early again, but again, Gyde was there. He was always there; his face was always there when you turned around. But that face was so guileless that surely it was paranoia to think this was anything but the light-footedness of an old warrior. This morning Gyde was absorbed in a thick case file when Pol entered the room. He put it in his desk drawer-not hastily but immediately. Pol stood at the coatrack, taking his time, hearing Gyde lock the drawer. It could be anything, that file, personnel records on some monitor that had caught Gyde's eye, anything at all.

"Don't get too comfortable," Gyde said pleasantly. "We have a lead-a citizen's report. Some Bronze thinks his neighbor might be the terrorist." "You want to go now?"

"You have a better idea, cla.s.smate?"

On the thirty-minute drive to the Bronze 2 suburb, Pol asked, "What did the report say? Does this neighbor have an ax to grind?"

That glint of steel sparkled in Gyde's eyes. Only Gyde could look pleased with himself and deadly at the same time. "The report mentioned illegal books. I've been thinking-these lunatic ideas our friend writes about had to come from somewhere, and it wasn't fromThe Lives of Our n.o.ble Forefathers ."

Pol nodded. That was smart. "Does this suspect work in construction?" "No. He's an entry-level clerk for the Department of Transportation." Pol didn't think that sounded promising. He didn't voice this opinion. "Can I ask you something?" Gyde said, glancing at him as he drove. "Yes." "You've been acting a little strange about this case. Not interested?" Pol smiled coldly. "Iaminterested. I'm very interested." "Good. You should be. You've got to want merits more than you let on."

Pol looked out the window. If an air-raid siren went off-as they had a tendency to do two or three times a day-he and Gyde would have to abandon the car and find shelter. Pol always thought about that when they had to drive across town, checking the buildings as they went past for structural soundness as though evaluating life insurance policies.

"You haven't mated yet," Gyde said. "After this case you'll have enough merits to qualify. You have to be excited about that." Pol turned his blue-white eyes to Gyde. It seemed like every day something came out of Gyde's mouth that Pol had never told him. How did he know Pol 137 had never mated?

"Haveyou ever mated?" Pol asked, turning the conversation around. Gyde hesitated, an odd look on his face. "I have a son." "A son?" "They tell you after the birth-if it's healthy or not, if it's been accepted into the cla.s.s, and its s.e.x.

My son is a Silver."

"Congratulations."

Gyde's lined face shone with pleasure. "It's a great thing to do for the state. You'd be proud if it

happened to you." Pol shrugged. He couldn't see what difference it made, knowing that you had a child out there. "And mating a Silver female," Gyde said in a low rumble. "It's nothing like the Iron wh.o.r.es at the rec hall. Nothing at all." Silver females were beautiful, it was true. They were plastered on billboards all over the city, just like the males. In their tight battle uniforms they were perfection: cool, marble white, strong, athletic, remote-un.o.btainable. Pol had learned from the gossip among Marcus's slaves that Silver females were notorious lesbians. The state did not allow them male lovers, not until they were a.s.signed to mate, not even the male equivalents of the sterilized Iron wh.o.r.es the male Silvers were granted. Pol had no interest in the Iron wh.o.r.es. He had no interest in female Silvers, for that matter. He had bigger problems. Gyde let out a long sigh. "The Silver I had . . . she was like milk. Like a river of warm milk." "What happened to her?" "After the mating I heard she was transferred to the Gefferdon Zone." For a moment neither commented. "I saw my son once," Gyde said quietly. "I thought that wasn't allowed." Gyde glanced in the rearview mirror, as if to confirm no one was there. "I saw him on the parade grounds three years ago. I knew he'd be about fifteen and I just happened to pa.s.s this cla.s.s of fifteen-year-olds. There was one boy, I swear to the G.o.ds he looked exactly like me except for his hair-that was his mother's."

There was an uncharacteristic tension in his voice. Pol turned his face to the window and smiled. It pleased him, seeing a crack in the tough old grindstone. It made him feel more secure somehow. He tried to think of a way to continue it.

"What about you?" he asked. "You've already mated. You're in the highest Silver cla.s.s, and you're close to retirement. Why areyou still chasing merits?"

In the distance, air-raid sirens went off. They both fell silent, peering out the window as Gyde let the car roll to a stop. But the tall speakers on either side of the street remained silent. The bombers were not coming this way. Gyde accelerated.

"Have you ever seen the retirement communities for Silvers?" Gyde asked lightly.

Pol hesitated. What was the right answer here? "No."

"Me, neither. In fact, I don't know anyone who has."

"They're down by the Southlands, aren't they?"

"Supposed to be." Gyde looked intently at the road for a moment, both hands on the wheel, as if challenged by conditions. But the traffic was light, the roads clear of ice. "I thought I would have heard more about it, since it's only six months away for me. But I haven't."

"You probably will."

"Yes. I probably will."

For once, Pol knew what to expect. The Bronze 2 suburb was not unlike the one Marcus had lived in, except that he'd had more servants than any of these people would ever have. Marcus had made a lot of money on the black market, but that didn't change his rank, didn't earn him permission to live in bigger or better housing, so his place had been crammed with things and slaves.

The homes were small units, single-bedroom many of them, each ab.u.t.ting onto the next. The front lawns, sporting raggedy snow, were no more than eight feet square. In the streets a few Bronze children played. Unlike the Silvers, Bronzies were allowed to marry. There was some genetic preapproval, but nothing like the scrutiny that went on while mating the upper cla.s.ses. Once married, a Bronze still had to get a permit for breeding, and generally they received only one such permit in a lifetime.

The children in the street were unremarkable-flat, ruddy faces, black hair. They stopped playing ball to watch the car drive past. There were whispers as they tried to peer inside. Pol could see the words on their lips.Silvers! Eager. Then, frightened:Monitors!

Within seconds, the children had disappeared.

Pol and Gyde found the address. According to their suspect's file he lived alone and should be at work this time of day. No one answered their knock. They let themselves in with their monitor keys.

Inside, they split up. Pol searched the kitchen while Gyde moved off down the hall. Within minutes Gyde called his name. Pol found him in a small bedroom. Gyde had turned over a narrow mattress and was peering down at a hidden stash with disgust, as though looking at a nest of spiders.

"Illegal books," he said, poking at them. "Secrets of the State, The Truth about the Races, Questioning Family Law . . .This Bronze slag is done for."

"I don't see any sign that he's our terrorist."

"Keep looking. If he's not our terrorist hecouldbe, reading this scarp."

Pol had no problem being thorough. In fact, he hunted obsessively. He pored over the details of the kitchen, opening every can and looking in every container for signs of black paint, an address, a name, anything. He was hoping hewould find something-the slightest clue that this guy was who they were looking for or, better yet . . . yes, better yet, a hint that he was not their terrorist but that heknew him-was part of some kind of clandestine society of deviants. And Pol would slip this hint-this name, this address, this secret pa.s.sword-into a pocket and not show it to Gyde.

Pol finished the kitchen and was examining the cleaning products under the bathroom sink when he heard the front door open and, a second later, a gunshot. He unholstered his piece, his senses on hyperalert, and ran into the living room. Gyde stood over a p.r.o.ne body, weapon relaxed in his hand. The corpse was that of a Bronze: thin, ruddy-skinned, and prematurely balding. He wore the orange uniform of a clerk. A dark pool was spreading like water on the floor. Pol stared at the blood. He had one of those weird s.h.i.+fts. It was too black, wasn't it? Didn't it spread too fast? He'd seenlots of blood when he'd decapitated the Silver, but that had been at night and he'd other things to worry about. Now he remembered-even in the dark, the blood from the neck ran out like wine. . . .

"What's the matter with you?" Gyde asked him, putting away his gun. "Never seen a dead body before? What kind of a warrior are you?"

"What happened?"

"What happened? He walked in."

Pol's tongue played against the back of his teeth.Don't ask. Don't ask questions like "Are you supposed to just shoot them like that?" Instead he lit a smoke and pa.s.sed one to Gyde. "You're sure it was him? The Bronze who lived here?"

"He used a key, didn't he? Besides, I saw a photo in his file this morning. It's him."

"We could have questioned him."

"What for? He didn't do it. You didn't find anything, did you?"

"No."

Gyde's green eyes snapped defensively. "He had illegal books. I'll get ten merits for taking him off the roll."

"Yes. Well done."

Pol took a few more drags, waiting for the weed to calm Gyde. It did. Gyde finished and dropped his smoke in the blood, where it hissed out. He walked back toward the bedroom.

"I'll get the contraband," Pol offered. "Why don't you radio the morgue? It's your kill."

Gyde's eyes narrowed at him, and for a moment Pol thought he saw suspicion in them. But then Gyde grinned in that disarming way of his and winked. He went out to the car, stepping carefully over the body.

*** Pol sat in his bathroom at the dorm paging throughThe Truth about the Races . He had once taken the mirror off the wall in here to be sure he wasn't being watched. He found he somehow knew about bugging devices and how to search for them, though he wasn't sure how or where he'd been trained for it. In any event, he'd found nothing. But in the process he had made a hole behind the mirror where he could store a few things-his makeup, hair dye, razors . . . and now the book.

The author discussed at length the physical characteristics of the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron races. Pol didn't find himself in any of them, nothing about a fair-skinned, dark-haired, blue-eyed, round-eyed, eyebrowed, bearded visage. Was the book missing races in other parts of the world, in other states? What about the enemy state, Mesatona? But the book was poorly written, and he couldn't find any definition of its scope. Like everything else in this world, the book painted a picture that was irredeemably polemic, and, to him, it read like a badly imagined lie.

There had to be other races. He couldn't be that much of a freak.

Everyone knew the Irons were damaged genetically and often produced monstrosities, the author wrote. But what was kept hidden by the state was the fact that monstrosities were also born to Silvers and Golds due to overbreeding for certain traits, like the bluest temples. That was why the state inst.i.tuted the policy of merits. To rise from a Bronze to a Silver or from a Silver to a Gold was a task beyond the reach of most citizens, but when a citizendid advance upward by merit the higher race benefited from the fresh blood of one of the best examples of the lower cla.s.ses.

You could advance from Bronze to Silver or Silver to Gold?Pol reread the paragraph carefully. How could he not have known that? No wonder everyone was so driven to earn merits. It was one of the basic a.s.sumptions underlying everything in this society that he had completely missed. He got up, splashed cold water on his face, and stared into the mirror.

He had seen his blue-white eyes scream with rage, as when he had killed the Silver. He had seen them confused and wary, as when he first came to live with Marcus. More recently they had been determined and grim, hard eyes. Now they looked frightened and unsure. Weak. They were weak. The vulnerability shook him deeply.

The genetic inferiority of the Iron race, according to the book, was due to a great calamity that happened at least two thousand years ago. The state had secret evidence of a prior civilization. This earlier culture had invented a weapon of ma.s.s destruction, a bomb that could destroy entire cities at one blast and poison the air for centuries. There had been a Great War with these bombs. The richest members of society and the big bra.s.s of the military had survived in bunkers underground. The rest of the population had been left outdoors to fend for themselves. Thus were the Gold, Silver, and Iron races born; thus the propensity for deformity among the Irons, their genetic chain contaminated forever by the bombs. The origins of the red-skinned Bronze race, so the author claimed, had been a native people dwelling in this land before the war began. This continent was one of the places least devastated by the war, so the survivors had settled here. Beyond the Southlands the rest of the planet remained uninhabitable. And in that vast desert were monuments that might indicate that this Great War was not even the first of its kind, that the warlike people of this planet might go through this cycle again and again.

Pol could almost see it in the gla.s.s like a moving picture. He had heard this story before, hadn't he? Hadn't there been the threat of a war like that where he'd come from? And there was the feeling he always had, too, another of those places where the seams did not meet, that they were missing . . .thingshere, that their technology was behind where it should be, that he was always reaching for devices that didn't exist-such as the small phone he kept imagining to be in his pocket when in reality there were only large ones, like the one on Gyde's desk.

Staring into his own ice-blue eyes in the gla.s.s, he was suddenly quite sure that he'd come from a place where these bombs, these weapons of ma.s.s destruction, existed. In fact, he felt he had been involved with them in some fundamental way. And he had no idea what to do with that.

He had planned to hide the book behind the mirror. He changed his mind. He tore the pages into small fragments and flushed them down the toilet; then he burned the cover in the sink. He watched as the black ash swirled, carried by the water down the drain.

17.2. Seventy-Thirty Jill Talcott

The math code printouts were tucked away in a silver soft pack they'd found at the s.p.a.ceport. Nate had it on his back, and the oversize bug goggles hung from the front of his jeans. The metal capsules from the supply room were being bounced in one hand pensively.

He looked like a prop person for a sci-fi film, especially with the blank, silent buildings filing past as they walked back from the s.p.a.ceport in the descent of the smaller sun. Jill had had the prop person thought, anyway-fleetingly. But her brain was churning from their momentous discovery, and what Nate looked like, or even an acknowledgment of their surroundings, had a hard time keeping a foothold there.

"Seventy-thirty," she said. "I still . . . I don't know."

"It's notthat unbelievable. We know we were completely bounced out of our own s.p.a.ce and time. Why not to a whole other universe?"

"But what does itmean , to be in a seventy-thirty universe?"

"I have a guess. In our experiments we saw that the crest in the wave correlated to a positive force and the trough to a negative one-which you could call 'good' and 'evil.' If life on Earth is a balance of good and evil-fifty-fifty-that meansthis planet, and probably the entire universe we're in, seventy percent good or creative impulse and thirty percent evil or destructive impulse."

"It's still hard for me to accept that Earth is fifty percent 'evil,' " Jill debated, with an impatient shake of her head. "That's certainly not my experience of it. And will you quit playing with those things? They could be dangerous."

Nate grinned sheepishly and put the metal capsules back in his pocket. "Why? Things decay and die, don't they? Who is it that said, 'What's not busy being born is busy dying'?"

"Nixon."

Nate gave a huffing laugh. "Anyway, all you have to do is look at our history. Most of it's been a bloodbath, including the twentieth century. What about Hitler? Nagasaki? Vietnam? The Khmer Rouge? Bosnia? And it's not just man-it's nature, too. 'Nature red in tooth and claw'? By all accounts the dinosaurs had a pretty vicious existence before they were wiped out permanently. In fact,mostspecies become extinct."

"That's true, but . . ."

"I know; I know. Our lifeseems cush. But we have a warped perspective. We happen to live-ha! welived- in a particularly benign place and time on Earth. But even so, even though modern Americans aren't being overrun by Huns or living in fear of plague or the Inquisition, are most people living a life of ease? Hardly. We invent more and more 'stuff' and gadgets and mindless entertainment, yet everyoneI know is stressed. People have to put their kids through sixteen years of expensive education and continue to reeducate themselves as adults. We have to maintain our cars and houses and all our 'stuff,' get groceries, feed the kids, pay the bills, worry about retirement, yadda, yadda, yadda. Meanwhile there's the IRS, mental illness, heart disease, AIDS, cancer, terrorist threats, stock market crashes, and school shoot-outs. Which explains why so many guys drop dead in their fifties from heart attacks. So even we Americans can't escape the law of fifty-fifty."

Jill looked at him in disbelief. "Where do you get this stuff? You're a carefree student."

Nate waggled his eyebrows. "I have six older siblings, remember?"

"Well,my life isn't that complicated-wasn'tthat complicated. Back on Earth, I mean. You can make the decisionnot to have life be that complicated."

"Yeah, you can be single and not have kids. But what are you giving up on the flip side? Because I think that's the point. No matter what choices we make to try to make life easy for ourselves, there's always something negative or somechallenge on the new path. You can't escape it.That's the law of good and evil."

Jill grimaced, face set stubbornly. "I don't agree. There is no disadvantage to being childless for me."

"Sure there is. It's just that you, as an individual, don't put much value on the positive aspects of having kids. Nor are you particularly worried about the negative aspects ofnot having kids. But let's look at the issue from a completely dispa.s.sionate point of view."

Jill shrugged.

"Okay. So having kids-here's on the good side: nurturing, mentoring, love, having a family around you, pa.s.sing on your genes-"

Jill snorted. "A: they're not that great as genes go. B: there are too many people on the planet already."

"Fine. That's your opinion. We're just listing pros and cons, remember? On the negative side of having kids there's the loss of personal time and s.p.a.ce, the financial burden, the limitations on lifestyle, the 'exasperation factor' of dealing with a child all the time-"

"Exactly."

"So you, personally, are more afraid of the negative stuff than you value the positive stuff. But for someone who gets off on being nurturing or really can't imagine life without a big family, it might be the other way around. Butobjectively , having kids is equal amounts reward and s.h.i.+t factor. In fact, I would say that, as with anything, the bigger the rewards, the bigger the s.h.i.+t factor. That's how fifty-fifty land works. Andnot having kids is equally good and bad. It's just a different set of gotchas."

Jill folded her arms defensively as she walked. "What's negative about not having kids?"

"You don't get all thegood stuff about having kids for starters, all the nurturing, family stuff. Plus, don't you want someone to take care of you when you're old?"

"If I can't take care of myself, I'd rather not hang around, frankly."

"Really?" Nate gave her an appraising look. "Okay, what about this: I remember my mother talking about my great-aunt. She was a ripe old b.i.t.c.h and Mom said it was because she'd never had kids, never learned how to have patience or put someone other than herself first. Without love in her life she just sort of hardened up. Emotions are like a muscle-use 'em or lose 'em. Kids definitely make you use 'em."

Jill shrugged indifferently, but a knot of pain flared in her chest. He had aimed that barb at her personally, and it was pretty d.a.m.n cruel.

For a moment she said nothing. Then, because she didn't want him to know how much he'd hurt her, she asked, "I a.s.sume this theory of yours has other examples?"

He shrugged, jiggling those capsules around in his hand. "Of course.Everything is fifty-fifty. Take flying, for example. Airplanes introduced a fast way to travel to just about anywhere on Earth. That's an amazing benefit compared to what our ancestors had. But it's never that simply good, huh-uh. Now we have all of the great cities, like in Europe, and all the most beautiful islands, like Greece, so packed with tourists that you can't even enjoy them anymore. People hijack planes and use them as weapons or target them with missiles. And the airport scene has gotten increasingly intolerable. There's also the little fact that although planes crash very rarely, when they do, your chances of survival are nil. In fact, that's kind of an interesting point. It's almost likebecause planes crash infrequently when they do it has to be catastrophic, as if the badness of the bad, when it happens, has to beso bad that it still balances out all the good."

"But planes are incredibly convenient!"

"Of course. So we invent stuff like that, trying to make life convenient. But there's always stuff that comes with it that we don't like, because nothing can be purely good."

"But how can you deny that life on Earth is a whole lot better now than it was in the Middle Ages? If everything stays fifty-fifty, by law, how would anything ever progress?"

Nate considered it. "But it progressesbecause it's fifty-fifty, because we always try to make things better, but we never actually get there. I mean, that's how evolution works, right? I do see your point, though. Things may be better for us,overall, than they were for our cave-dwelling ancestors. It may be that things gradually improve over time, even if it's still fifty-fifty. You know, more like the entire graph s.h.i.+fts upward in tiny increments."

Jill gave an appreciativehmmm . It wasn't all that far from Darwin's theory, actually. Species did, overall, improve, but things rarely ever stabilized. There were always new challenges to be overcome, new ways for the species to try to adapt.

"Even so," Nate continued, "nothing comes without a cost. Is life really that much better in the twentieth century than it was in the fourteenth? Yeah, we have modern technology. But with it came the bomb, car and plane crashes, computer hackers, global warming, and TV zombification. What are we missing emotionally now that we no longer live close to the land, raise our own food, or live in extended communities? Modern society may be superior in some ways, but it's highly isolating and remote, from other people, even from our own planet. Nothing comes without a price. That's fifty-fifty."

Despite herself, Jill had to smile at hiscojones. "Give me a break! You're as much of a TV zombie as anyone, and you wouldn't know how to raise a potato to save your life."