Forge of the Elders, page 48
"Cuban and Nicaraguan invasion. Believe me, it was equipped for the task it was designed to accomplish. We had a local MacDonald's, a Safeway, a Starbuck's, a Baer garage, a laundromat, a dry cleaner, two bars, a little one-horse shopping mall, three restaurants—"
"One of them Chinese."
Tai laughed. "That's right, a synagogue and two churches, one Roman Catholic, used by Manchurian peasants shipped in to simulate a minority population. The other you might call generic Protestant—all Western religions look alike to Beijing. We had a movie theater and a radio station offering rock music and farm reports. Internet communication was limited to other villages in the program. TV was piped in from Japanese, Swiss, and South African satellites."
"Why not American satellites?" Another question he'd never have been allowed to ask back home.
"Because by then, American TV no longer reflected individualistic values which the program's directors were interested in. As a matter of fact, it hadn't for some time."
"I see. Well, tell me more about Calumet, Colonel Tai—Chuck. What else did it have to offer?"
"We had a video rental, a bank, even a gun shop—I was a grown man, an officer in the Red Army, before I knew how remarkable that was. On Sunday mornings the streets of Calumet would be filled with Ford and Chevy pickups with Norinco copies of Winchester and Marlin rifles hanging in their back windows. We even had one freelance prostitute living in a small frame house at the edge of town. I always believed she was PRC Intelligence, reporting directly to Beijing."
"And what about your life, growing up in Calumet?"
"No complaints. I was educated in an American-style community-oriented school system. `I pledge allegiance to the flag of the People's Republic of China, and to the collective for which it stands . . .' I took Mandarin as a second language, along with Spanish. My folks belonged to the PTA and taught Sunday school. I was a Cub Scout, Boy Scout, Explorer, 4H, Junior Red Cross, and played clarinet for a while in my high-school band. I had to quit because I made the football team—my `sports collective,' as Beijing called it—the `Wolverines.'"
Jones laughed at another reference to Milius. "How did your hometown interact with the rest of China?"
"Not much. Calumet was surrounded by mechanized, American-sized farms owned by the farmers, which served as a source of supply for the program and as a cultural buffer. Outside the farms was a forested zone, ringed with barbed wire, guard towers, and mine fields, which could be crossed only with permission from Beijing. Among the kids of Calumet, it was known as the `Lost Cojones Wildlife Preserve.' "
"I see—"
"That wasn't the only thing lost there—the first time I got laid was in those woods, in the shadow of an automated gun emplacement. No attempt was made to deceive us—we knew we were Chinese, living in China under special circumstances—or to deny us news of the outside world. Nor was any attempt made to indoctrinate us, either in Marxism or Chinese socialism. We had been placed where we were to see what developed. Our job was to be as classically American, to live as much like classical Americans, as we could."
"Which meant what?"
"Well, the program's directors couldn't be certain exactly what elements had most contributed to America's two centuries of almost unbroken prosperity and progress. They were terribly afraid to leave out anything, for fear it might prove important. So every aspect of American life, at least as we knew it, was copied in the most painstaking detail possible in Calumet and her sister villages.
"Our diet, which we largely supplied ourselves, was scandalously high in protein by PRC standards. Bureaucrats were always complaining that we swam in caffeine and nicotine, but they even allowed us a `statistically valid' amount of marijuana, sold by the lady I mentioned in the frame house at the edge of town."
"What was that about Calumet's `sister villages'? I hadn't heard about that before."
"In a way, you Americans really ought to be complimented—Calumet was only one of several artificial environments, each as American as . . . well, as America had been before it turned itself into a socialist republic. The Great Leap Sideways created eight or nine midwestern—`Smallville,' I think they called it—southern, northwestern, and southwestern towns. The only typical American environment deliberately excluded by the program was that of your East Coast: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and so forth."
"And why was that?"
Tai shrugged. "The directors felt that they too-closely imitated Europe, producing the same human sheep, and contributed negatively to individualism. It's true, isn't it, that the northeast was the first American region to begin sovietizing itself?"
"Who's interviewing who here?"
"Who's interviewing whom. Our towns, on the other hand, were intended to close the `nerd gap,' to assure the social and technical progress Beijing came to feel were a natural outgrowth of untrammeled individualism. Aside from the obvious travel restrictions, the only limit was that the advocacy of collectivism was discreetly but firmly discouraged."
"Collectivism? Discouraged how?"
"Well, a newspaper editor I recall—we had a little weekly and the high-school paper wasn't bad—wrote a couple of editorials demanding confiscation of all the guns in town. Shortly after the second—I figure he must have gotten a quiet warning lecture about the first—he moved away and was never heard from again."
"All because the directors weren't certain what elements had contributed to American prosperity and progress, and were afraid to leave out anything, including private gun ownership."
"Exactly. They still aren't certain, especially since you people wound up destroying everything I was brought up to believe had been constructive and decent about America."
"Hmm. Well, now that you're here on 5023 Eris and the Great Leap Sideways is no longer a secret, what of the program's future—and that of the people you left behind?"
"Oh, it'll stay a secret. The program was always controversial in Beijing and that's truer now than ever. The third and fourth generations have begun to chafe under restrictions imposed on them by the outside world—consisting of a communist dictatorship. Beijing has never forgotten the hideous propaganda blunder committed by Deng, so they'll step lightly, but they're afraid of all these uncontrolled and uncontrollable individualists they've created—"
"Is there a particular reason for that?"
"Aside from general principles? Sure: they made a terrifying discovery in the second generation and never quite got over it. At first, Calumet and her sister villages were merely prosperous. After a subsidiary experiment abolishing taxes and internal economic regulation, they began producing huge surpluses, overwhelming the economies of the districts where they were based. The directors were afraid to reinstate taxes and regulation for fear of wrecking the program. Unlike American politicians, they understood the danger of interfering in a culture schooled in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party and Concord Bridge. However, they were equally afraid to acknowledge the actual economic effects—as opposed to the widely advertised and purely mythical benefits—of taxes and regulation."
"And that was a generation ago. How did it all work out?"
"Beijing decided to buy whatever surplus we produced. The old guard argued that it must be destroyed to avoid further disruption. This would have defeated the whole purpose of the program, but it would have been the Chinese thing to do.
"Younger politicians, not so young by now, argued that the program should be allowed to generate the benefits it was designed to generate. I suspect some were benefitting individually, on the black market. Anyway, we're on permanent probation, just as we've always been. In a sense, our group, the PRC Extra-Special Forces, has been sent here for much the same reason yours was."
"And that, specifically, is . . ."
"Well, if we accomplish anything positive out here for Beijing, that's fine. If not, at least Beijing is rid of some of us in a sanitary manner. Perhaps they'll wind up sending the rest of us and wash their hands of us entirely. Who can say?"
"Well, Colonel Tai, on that sobering but hopeful note, we'll end this. Thanks very much. I'd also like to thank Mister Thoggosh personally for giving me this opportunity. As a former network anchorman and a stringer for all the most prestigious American newspapers, this may be the first honest reporting I've ever done.
"Given a chance, it won't be the last.
"C. C. Jones, reporting for the Elders' Cerebro-cortical Network."
FIFTY-EIGHT The Cybernetic Samoyed
Eichra Oren had returned to the low-ceilinged chamber of moving metal cubes and unearthly blue light.
Somehow he knew it was a nightmare. In some corner of his mind he was aware that he was still keeping his vigil with Model 17 on a street bench just outside Dlee Raftan Saon's surgery in the Elders' settlement, just as he knew that he had been completely exhausted by the disorienting shock of losing what amounted to his symbiote.
Knowing that didn't help him wake himself up as he was usually able to, or keep him from reliving the last few terrible moments of Sam's life.
He'd heard the dog screaming (a gut-wrenching sound that couldn't be described any other way) from an adjoining passageway at the same time it came to him over his implant. He didn't remember how he'd covered the intervening distance in the interval of a heartbeat. Sam had been so badly hurt that it hadn't mattered.
In any other context, it might have made the very picture of absurdity. As the arachnid engineer, Remgar d'Nod, stood by helplessly, Eichra Oren had found the terminally injured animal almost standing on his hind legs, his head sticking up like that of a comic decapitation victim from between two of the massive metal blocks—blocks now set apart by the space of less than a centimeter.
The worst part was that Sam's mind was still working. He could still communicate his agony electronically. What leaked from around the circumference of the crack between those blocks—a fleeting impression of blood-soaked fur was all the man permitted himself now—hadn't borne close examination, and Eichra Oren had been grateful for the low, off-colored light. It had been obvious enough, both to him and to the dog, that from the neck down Sam was already dead.
Thinking fast and acting even faster, on a desperate inspiration which hadn't formed within his conscious mind, Eichra Oren had drawn his razor-sharp assessor's sword—even now he could hear the ringing, steely whisper of the double-edged blade as it leaped from his scabbard—and struck off the dog's head, level with the tops of the blocks. Wrapping what was left of his friend in transparent plastic from the environmental suit Remgar d'Nod had shucked off and shoved at him, he'd rushed it to the surface, another journey that he failed now to remember clearly, although he did recall that it had seemed to go on for days.
Similarly, he didn't remember the flight from the excavation site to the Elders' settlement at all. However long it had lasted, it had lasted far too long. In the end, his desperate gamble to save Sam had failed. Instead of keeping his best friend alive, he had taken away his last few minutes and mutilated him in the bargain.
Now, a familiar, disembodied voice echoed inside his skull. "Trust the Force, Boss."
"What—!" Eichra Oren shook his aching head, certain he must still be asleep.
"And never let 'em tell you that major wounds don't hurt. Boy, I'd like to find the dickless wonder who thought that one up and squish his gizzard in a vise!"
"Sam!" The possibility that he had gone insane entered the man's mind. "Is that you, Sam?"
"Obi Wan Doggie, himself. I'd make that `in the flesh,' but it would be a base canard—or maybe just a baritone canard. While we're on the subject, Boss, let's discuss beheading as a first-aid technique."
Eichra Oren opened his eyes to discover the American TV reporter, C. C. Jones, with Colonel Chuck Tai, late of the PRC Extra-Special Forces, bending over him where he'd fallen off the bench onto the sidewalk. Squatting between the newcomers, Model 17 had extended a cold, hard, but commiserating feeler of some sort and was stroking his arm. Danny Gutierrez leaned on the wall behind them, the usual cigarette smoldering in his hand.
"Hey, I wouldn't get too close, you guys," the lieutenant wisely observed, "just in case he wakes up fighting!"
"My poor, unfortunate friend," Model 17 exclaimed, "I do not know what convulsions are supposed look like in your species, but I believe that you were having them a moment ago, which may account for Lieutenant Gutierrez's rather thoughtless and unsympathetic remark. Are you quite all right now, Eichra Oren?"
"He could start a business called `Thoughtless and Unsympathetic Remarks Are Us.' " Eichra Oren levered himself to his feet, sat down on the bench, and pressed both palms to his eyes. "You wouldn't think I was all right if I told you the dream I just had."
"Why don't you try us anyway?" suggested Danny, dropping the cigarette and crushing it out with his heel. He walked over to put a hand on the debt assessor's shoulder. "I let you sleep, O shamus of shame, because you looked like you could use the rest. You've been dead to the world, snoring at ninety decibels, for over an hour."
"Tell 'em all to go away, Boss," the voice inside his skull demanded, sounding more and more authentically like Sam. "Tell 'em we're busy. We gotta talk."
This time, Eichra Oren almost jumped off the bench. He started to reply, then looked up warily at Danny, the American reporter, the Chinese officer, and the robot, knowing that even if he wasn't losing his mind, none of the four had cerebro-cortical implants—which seemed to be the source of Sam's voice—couldn't hear what he was hearing, and would assume he'd gone insane. If they hadn't already.
"Mr. Jones," he began carefully, "I understand from Aelbraugh Pritsch that you've been interviewing Colonel Tai about his military unit for the implant network."
"That's right," the reporter replied. "We just finished and were headed to Nellus Glaser's for a beer."
Eichra Oren nodded. "Well, I may have another story for you, but I don't know whether the headline should read—" he glanced up at Danny "—`Guilt Gumshoe Goes Ga-ga' or `Deceased Dog Discourses.' " He looked from one face to another and back again, then cleared his throat. "I seem to be hearing Sam over my implant."
There was a long silence.
All three men looked down at him with their hands thrust in their pants pockets, tossing occasional brief glances up and down the street as if to reassure themselves that this embarrassing conversation into which they had somehow fallen wasn't being overheard by strangers. To his chagrin, they were wearing expressions he'd never expected to see directed his way. The black face showed impatient skepticism, even mild contempt, while the yellow seemed inclined to pity. The brown face, Danny's, shook from side to side with an unreadable smile.
"Boss, that's only because I managed to upload all my personality and memories at the height of the excitement downstairs, first into the electronic areas of my brain—which kept overflowing, by the way, giving me full-chip warnings and scaring the bejabbers out of me—and then onto the information storage and communications network."
"In the name of p'Na—"
"Hey, it wasn't any big deal—except that it does constitute the first genuine out-of-body experience ever documented. I'm the document, in fax! At three hundred thousand klicks a second, I was here at the surgery before you—and my head—were."
"Eichra Oren." Model 17 touched him on the arm again, shyly. "If you have been driven mad," she told him electronically, "then at least you are not alone, for I have attuned my self-contained electromagnetic communications circuitry to the Elders' network, and I, too, can hear your recently deceased friend."
"Eavesthinker!" Sam's tone was bantering.
Eichra Oren laughed out loud, transforming Jones and Tai's skeptical and pitying looks into expression of alarm until he began to explain what had just happened outside their hearing. Danny understood immediately and began to grin from ear to ear.
"Tell him—tell him I'm glad he isn't dead!"
"Actually, it's nice to hear you, Model 17," Sam declared, the robot relaying his words to the astonished Jones and Tai through a transducer on her carapace. "Danny. For that matter, it's nice to be hearing anything, considering the alternative!"
"You'd be in a fix," the lieutenant replied, "if Model 17 hadn't rigged communication with the surface."
"Yes," Tai agreed, "this would be a religious experience instead of an ordinary conversation."
Eichra Oren turned to the colonel. "Tell me one thing ordinary about it and the drinks are on me, Chuck."
"Try and relax a little, Boss. I'll be my old self again in no time at all. Dlee Raftan Saon and Rosalind held onto my head—which you'll notice I'm not exactly using right now—and are presently extracting tissue from it to clone me a brand-new body. Not a pretty sight, believe me, but I guess the Elders' medical technology is good for something after all, besides helping nautiloids live too long!"
"I believe a highly cogent argument could be made," replied a new voice, "that our friend Sam never did have much use for his head. In the end, that's probably all that saved him. The operation was a failure, but the patient lived."
Dryly chuckling, Dlee Raftan Saon emerged from the dilated door of the clinic with a tired-looking Rosalind Nguyen behind him. The insect physician used all four hands to fluff up the hanging fabric strips of which his clothing was made and sat down, as near as his species ever came to it, on the bench beside the man.
"I'm here to tell you that there's nothing, on this world or any other, quite like laboring for hours performing delicate surgery with an obnoxious patient as a backseat driver!"
Rosalind smiled but said nothing, a look of understanding sympathy in her eyes for Eichra Oren. Wearing surgical greens from Soviet American expedition stores, she pulled the cap off, shaking her hair out and running her slim fingers through it.
"C'mon, now, Doc," Sam complained electronically, "it couldn't have been as bad as that. Why, most of the time I wasn't even there. I was elsewhere, practicing a newfound aptitude for astral projection. Okay, half-astral—I had to say it before any of you did. For example, I heard Eichra Oren here promise Danny he'd really listen to Model 17's story about the Eldest."
