The Tomorrow File (48 page)

Then we four were naked. A tangle on the crumpled sheet. Paul and I drank wine from them. This amused us all. But the alcohol stung when they took us into full mouths. We bit their flesh. To screams. The taste of the two efs was quite different: Millie soft, sweet, pulpy; Sophie tart, hard, astringent. Paul and I knocked foreheads as our tongues met in some viscous trap. We discovered Millie was able to suck her own nipples. Sophie locked her heels behind her head and pouted that bearded mouth to all. We knew the world would end the next instant.

During that fevered night I lurched out into the hallway, found the nest. And there was Paul, standing on the closed toilet, his head and shoulders out the opened window. He appeared to be inspecting the rear wall of the adjoining buildings.

“Paul, what are you doing?”

He came inside slowly, climbed down.

“I had to get some air,” he said. “I thought I was going to faint.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“About what?”

“Sophie.”

He stared at me.

“Nick,” he said, “believe this. It’s operative. The best orgasm I’ve ever had in my life.”

“Oh?” I said. “Why?”

“Why? Why? I’m not sure.”

“Try.”

“Complete mastery. I owned her.”

“That’s interesting,” I said.

Physical pleasure demands deliberation. Passion is for beasts. The second half of that
Walpurgisnacht
was cool, muted, considered. Occasionally painful. We all moved slowly in a grunted dream. Some things we could not do. But tried.

By dawn we were emptied. I slept on the floor. When I awoke aching, I found the other three on the bed, spoon-fashion, hands grasping swollen flesh in sleep.

I moved them about. Slowly, gently. They did not awake, but muttered, groaned. It was more pained stupor than sleep. I arranged the efs on their backs, knees raised and spread. Paul turned, twisted, his flaccid genitals plastered to his thigh.

It was Egon Schiele, of course. I had recognized it the moment I saw their rawness. Now, exposed, I dimly glimpsed a truth and began to understand. It went beyond sexuality. To a primitive something. A dark mystery I could not deny. It drew me, this wonder long sought. It was almost a revelation.

Paul and I got home safely. I bathed and went to bed. I presumed he did the same. I know I didn’t see him until late that afternoon. I was forcing myself to eat some food, on the terrace, and trying to stop a bursting thirst with a tall vodka-and-Smack. Paul took his place opposite me, nodding. He was quite pale. I suppose I was, too.

Later, carrying a second vodka-and-Smack, we wandered out onto the grounds. We wore flannel bags, heavy sweaters. There was, thankfully, a nip in the wind. It dried sweat, brought a welcome chill. I did not mention the previous night. Nor did Paul. I think we were both too awed by what we had done.

“About the UP pill,” I said. “Are you up to speed?”

“Yes.”

“Reactions?” '

“On the physical factor, I can see a reasonable hope. Houston says it will definitely be addictive, psychologically if not physiologically. I see it as a combined narcotic and euphoric. I think the chemistry can be solved.”

“I concur. But you don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

“I’m not. Nick, if all we want is the world’s greatest physical jerk, we might as well go to an opium-based derivative, or an amphetamine, and have everyone in the country on the nod or grinning their way through life in a semipermanent state of goofiness. That’s not what we want, is it?”

“You know better than that.”

“Honolulu was equivocal. They didn’t say yes, and they didn’t say no. Except for Ruben’s report.”

“Oh-ho. You caught that. Know the em?”

“Never heard of him before.”

“I served with him on a memory project. Very quiet. Shy. A chess genius. With a fantastic ability to go straight to the jugular of a problem. You notice that while everyone else in Honolulu was trying to analyze the mental factor in happiness, only Ruben realized it may consist of no mentality at all. What was it he said? ‘The total absence of conscious ratiocination may prove to be the dominant mental factor in states of euphoria.’ That’s pure Ruben. It’s even the way he talks.”

“He also said, in his report, ‘Mental happiness may result from complete absence of responsibility.’ Interesting.”

“Yes. Well, Spokane was unequivocal. They said flat-out that, psychologically, happiness is such a subjective state that there is no common denominator. Do you believe that?”

“I don’t want to, Nick. If it’s true, we can forget about the UP pill.”

“Well, I don’t believe it. Paul, we’ll never get a pill with one hundred percent effectiveness. What pill has? Even aspirin is ineffective on some subjects. If we can jerk even seventy-five percent, I’ll be satisfied.”

“You have a very low satiety level.”

I laughed. We continued our stroll. Wandering through the trees. Crunching dried leaves underfoot. I began to believe I might live. “What is Lewisohn up to?” Paul asked abruptly.

“I was wondering when you’d get curious. As nearly as l can tell, his plan is mainly economic. I don’t believe he’s done any computing on the social organization it will demand! He probably assumes social form will follow economic function.”

“What’s the economic plan?”

“A corporate state,” I said. “That’s as close as I can come. Evolving into a corporate world. All means of production owned by the government. Planning takes over the role of the marketplace. ” “The individual buys stocks or bonds in the government?” “Possibly. Perhaps the total of voluntary contributions determines an object’s share. I don’t believe Lewisohn has yet considered the problems, the social problems.”

“It would have to be authoritarian. The government.”

“Of course. But no more than, say, General Motors or IBM. A benevolent despotism. Written into law. You better make notes on this in the Tomorrow File.”

“Yes. I will. It implies a class society, doesn’t it?”

“If Lewisohn has computed it at all, he probably envisions economic classes: rulers, managers, servers. Not too different from what we have now.”

“With free vertical movement between classes?”

“I would imagine so. Paul, why are you so interested in Lewisohn’s plan?”

“Because right now he’s serving on social unrest. But I see nothing in his proposed world, as you describe it, that would eliminate the unrest.”

“The UP pill might.” 

“Perhaps. But we agreed we don’t want something to keep servers perpetually dopey. They’ve got to produce. How about the UP pill as a reward?”

“For producing? Now you’re just substituting a drug for love. That solves nothing.”

“Yes. Yes, Nick, you’re right. Let me compute this a little more.”

On the following day, in our compartment aboard the Bullet Train to GPA-1, Paul returned to the subject.

“If the purpose of the UP pill is to curb social unrest,” he said, “then it cannot be considered by itself, a new drug,
in vacuo.
It must be developed in the context of the social situation.”

“In other words, you’re saying we should work backward from the purpose? Determining the social goal, then developing the UP "pill that achieves it?”

“In a way. Nick, we’ve got to create a
political
drug.”

“A political drug,” I murmured.

“Exactly. The UP pill must be effective, physiologically. But it cannot succeed as we want it to unless it is encapsulated in a social organization that reinforces it. One has no greater value than the other. But both sustain each other, mutually dependent.”

“Are you saying then that purely
physical
joy—Ultimate Pleasure, if you will—is sufficient if the social organization is so computed as to provide the mental and psychological factors of operative happiness?”

“Yesss,” Paul said slowly. “That’s about it.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think so, too. Let’s serve along those lines.”

We came out into the low ceilings and rancid, littered corridors of the Pennsylvania Station in New York. At one point in time a huge* railroad depot had stood here. Modeled after the Baths of Caracalla^ With enormous, delicate, soaring spaces that dwarfed objects and at the same time, strangely, enobled them. But that cathedral was before my time. I never knew it.

On October 15,1 was to take the 1300 air shuttle to Washington, D.C. But I had several official duties to get through that morning. Paul Bumford accompanied me on my rounds. Whenever we had the chance, whenever we were alone, we went over once again the details of the scenario for the next five days.

Our first visit was to C Lab where Paul’s Memory Team leader was staging a demonstration for us. They had been serving on the physical transfer of memory from one object to another of the same species. They had developed a derivative of purified RNA, from the donor object, hyped with a chlorinated uracil. Since, at that point in time, we had an evidentiary indication that memory was both a chemical and an electrical process, the Memory Team was experimenting with a very low-frequency current, in the range of human theta waves, to boost the effect of the injected chemicals.

In this case, the donor was a young em chimpanzee. He had been trained to pull a lever that released a food pellet. Positive behavioral conditioning. He was then sacrificed. Lovely word. RNA was extracted from his brain, purified by a newly developed cryogenic process-, and combined with the uracil compound.

This mixture was then injected into the internal carotid of an untrained em chimp of the same breeding group—a “brother” of the donor. At the same time the untrained chimp was fitted with a metal helmet, self-powered, that generated the theta waves.

We all crowded around the one-way glass window looking into the chimp’s room. In a moment, a lab server carried him in. The chimp’s arms were clamped about the ef’s neck. She gently disengaged him, set him in the middle of the floor, left the room. The chimp stared about curiously. He looked like a little, hairy astronaut.

“Haven’t been starving him, have you, Ed?” I asked the Team Leader.

“Sure,” he said cheerfully. “We need all the help we can get.”

“As long as you haven’t trained him,” Paul said.

“I swear,” the Team Leader murmured.

We watched the chimp in silence. He rose to all fours, put his head back, yawned. He scratched his ass. Exactly like the Scilla secretary Paul and I had watched on the TV monitor in San Diego.

Then the chimp looked around, bounced up and down once or twice as if to loosen his muscles. He ambled over to the food dispensing panel.

“He’s going for it,” someone breathed.

Almost without pausing, the animal reached up, yanked the lever, released it, lifted the metal cover of the chute, removed the food pellet, popped it into his mouth and began to chew, grimacing.

“Son of a bitch,” someone said. Wonderingly.

Strangely, there was no elation. I think we just looked at each other, stunned. I know I was trying to compute the significance of what I had just seen. What it meant. What it could lead to. Physical transfer of memory. The power!

“Congratulations, Ed,” I said finally. Shaking his hand. “Try it again. And again. And again. Publish nothing. It looks good.”

He took me aside for a moment.

“How’s the RSC, Nick?” he asked.

“Fine,” I lied. “No problems.”

“Good. When are you due for a hippocampal irrigation?”

“February.”

“See me before then. We’ve been serving on something new.”

“Will do. Congratulations again, Ed. Very impressive.”

If we had one triumph that morning, we also had one disappointment. We stopped by Phoebe Huntzinger’s office in the computer complex. I knew she had been monitoring Project Phoenix in Denver. She had come to feel it was her baby. Baby wasn’t growing.

“Nothing,” Phoebe growled. The moment we walked in. “Nothing plus nothing gives you nothing.”

Her heavy brogues were propped up on a desk littered with books, pamphlets, journals, papers. Paul and I pulled up chairs facing her.

“Mary Bergstrom checked out the brain technology,” Paul said. Defensively. “She says it’s operative.”

Phoebe nodded glumly. She was fretted by this problem. “Nick,” she said slowly, “if it was a nice day out, and I passed you in the hall or outside, what would you say to me?”

I looked at her.

“All right, I’ll play your game,” I said finally. “I’d probably say, ‘Hello, Phoebe. Nice day.’ ”    

“Precisely,” she said. Bringing her feet down from the desk, hitching her chair toward us. “You’d say, ‘Nice day.’ But you’d say it like, ‘Niceday.’ In effect, you wouldn’t use two words, an adjective and a noun. You’d use one word, ‘Niceday,’ as a kind of label for the kind of day it was. Compute? You’d not only say, ‘Niceday,’ but you’d think, ‘Niceday.’ A combination of two words, a union that describes verbally
and in your mind
the kind of day it is. You don’t think ‘nice’ and then think ‘day’ and then put the two together. You get input from the sky, the sun, the air, and then' your brain leaps immediately to the label, ‘Niceday.’ ”

“So?” Paul said. He was interested now. Leaning forward to stare at her.

“See this kaka?” she said. She pushed at the stacks of books on her desk. “Linguistics. How we are conditioned to think in words. But more than one object suggests we don’t think in words at all. Not individual words. A lot of our thinking is in phrases, even sentences, that constitute labels. Niceday, howareyou, hardrain, hotsun, cutekid. Compute? Nick, send me out to Denver. I want to reprogram that damned Golem to pick up a couple of thousand basic, primitive verbal labels in the English language. I can make up my own list from all this—’ ’ Again she shoved at the research on her desk. “And it may help us pick up coherent thoughts. It certainly can’t do any harm. All we’ve done so far is print out a few individual words.”   

“Phoebe,” I said, “sounds to me like you’ll be making Golem sensitive to cliches.”

“All right, all right,” she said. “Cliches. Call them that if you want to. That’s what ninety percent of human speech consists of, isn’t it?”