“Okay, now here’s the situation. I’ve been talking to the Secretary about this, and he’s had some consultations with his staff and talked to the President a couple of times, and the thinking now is that somewhere down the line we might have to take, um, extreme measures. Now I gather you’re trying to identify these children by their brain-waves?”
“Yes.”
“How are you coming on that?”
“We’re making some progress.”
“All right, keep us posted. How’s the weather?”
“The weather is fine. Hank, what do you mean by ‘extreme measures’?”
“Well, it’s just a thought now, we may never do it. But if push comes to shove, we’re thinking we might have to test all the newborns in the country, and if they’re positive, put them away painlessly.”
“Hank, you can’t do that.”
“Well, we hope we won’t have to, of course.”
“I mean, politically you can’t do it.”
“Oh, well, don’t worry, the President will work that out.”
“It’s an abhorrent thought.”
“I know that,” Harmon said sympathetically. “It is abhorrent, Harriet, and let’s hope it never happens, but we have to be prepared. Keep in touch about the brain-waves, will you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s all then, Harriet. Good to talk to you.”
Owen sat brooding at her desk for a long time. Finally she roused herself and said, “Mitzi, Eliza mode.”
“Yes, Harriet?” The Eliza voice was warmer than Mitzi’s; it sounded like that of a woman in her vigorous middle years. “What seems to be troubling you?”
She hesitated. “I suppose I’m feeling a conflict between my scientific training and my moral scruples.”
“Can you put that in simpler terms?”
“Don’t you understand it?”
“The question is whether you understand it.”
Touche. “Well, all right. My duty as a scientist is to investigate problems and propose solutions, and that’s all. To introduce moral considerations into that process would be bad science. But as a human being I have to think sometimes about the effect of what I do.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Yes, I can. One of the things I’m trying to find out is whether the primary hosts of McNulty’s show irreversible personality changes more severe than those of secondary hosts, and if so whether those changes imply a threat to society. If I conclude that there is such a possibility, the political effect may be a decision to sacrifice those children. If I’m wrong, I may be doing good science, but I’m committing a crime against humanity.”
“Which is more important, doing good science or not committing a crime against humanity?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you think of any circumstances in which you would decide one way or the other?”
“Well, if I knew absolutely that the primary hosts would cause the breakdown of civilization, then I wouldn’t have any difficulty, but there’s no way I can know that for certain. But I can’t avoid the necessity of coming to some conclusion. If I ignore the problem or refuse to deal with it on moral grounds, that in itself is a decision that could be morally criminal.”
“So your problem is that you have to act on inadequate knowledge?”
“Yes.”
“And that either way you decide, you may be wrong?”
“Yes.”
“In general, what is the solution to such problems?”
“To gain enough knowledge to make firm predictions.”
“Is that part of doing science?”
“Yes. I see.” After a moment she said, “Thank you, Eliza.”
Afterward she sat back and thought about it. She knew perfectly well that the Eliza program was only a series of Rogerian strategies designed to draw the patient out and elicit better statements of the problem in which the solution might be implicit; and yet it seemed almost uncanny to her how quickly it had gone to the heart of the matter.
It was true that these decisions could not be made without moral agony until there was a real science of human behavior. Every good experiment and every bit of firm data was an advance toward that goal. That was the answer; it had to be.
She felt better, but she still didn’t feel good. In science, where it was a point of pride to use precise terminology, why did they have to say “sacrifice,” of all things, when they meant “kill”?
17
President Draffy was having a nightmare, a frequent occurrence lately: he was in some dark place underground, and hideous little people dressed like children were swarming around him, snapping at his legs. He knew it was a dream because he had had it before, and he was trying to wake up before they ate him alive.
Finally his eyes came open. He was alone in tangled sheets, not in the White House but Camp David. He turned on the bedside lamp; it was after three o’clock. The sky beyond the blinds was cold and dark as ink.
Sweat was trickling down his jowls and pooling at the bottom of his neck. He smelled rank to himself, like somebody who’d had a fever. He got up, took off his pajama tops and threw them toward the bathroom hamper, splashed water on his face, then patted on some cologne. The face was puffy, eyes bloodshot; he needed a shave. Hell with it. He put on his robe, went out into the sitting room and poured himself a substantial bourbon and water. He sat down, took a jolt.
The more he thought about it, the clearer it became that it was those damned kids, the ones they called “primary hosts”—infected by the parasite at birth. He wanted to do something about it; should have done it before, but he had listened to bad advice. “Buz,” he should have said, “I’m the President, and the President has to do what’s right for the country, regardless if it’s a good move politically.” He should have said, “I want this done. I don’t care how you do it.”
He took another jolt, getting angry now. God damn it, he was the President, and those goddamn kids were out to get him. Reports said that some of them showed “indications of paranormal abilities.” Translation, the little bastards could get inside your head, never mind what else. The thought gave him the cold shudders. Holy Christ, what would become of politics if somebody could tell exactly what you were thinking all the time?
He finished the bourbon, got up and poured another. All right, what should he do? No use coming up with something half-assed, they would just talk him out of it again. Next year the goddamn veep would be President, unless the Democrats got lucky, and he would never have the guts to do anything. Question was, could you get rid of those kids? Had to find that out first. A pilot operation, keep it under cover. Don’t even discuss it with Larry and Buz. He went back into the bedroom, scribbled a note to himself: “Lowry.” He took a pill, washed it down with the tail-end of the bourbon, got back into bed. And had the dream again.
The next day, after his interview with the President, Dan Lowry went back to his office and sat doodling on a pad for a while. Then he called in Jeb Kroger, who was the nearest thing to a wild man the Company had now.
Lowry briefly outlined the project the President had asked him to undertake. “Frankly,” he said, “I think we need a nut for this one. We can’t use one of our own people, we need somebody with at least some data trail of mental illness, and for our purposes I think he really should be crazy.”
“You want me to find you a maniac?”
“That’s right, but it’s got to be a reliable maniac.”
“You’re pissing down my leg.”
“No, I’m perfectly serious. Let’s use the short words, okay? We’re talking mass killing here, and not only that, killing of little kids. Somebody has to take the fall for that, and only a crazy person would do it.”