Anyhow. The thing about waging a war on a methodology, as opposed to anything concrete, was that you could target anyone who you pretty much liked, and pretty much get away with anything in the name of it.
Initially, the live subjects were suspected so-called “terrorists”, who at the time were busily being detained and stockpiled without due process. The experiments were… not a success, unless you count spontaneous mutation into something abominable, feculent and dead to be successful.
It was believed that the material itself was in some way attempting to adapt those to whom it was exposed, so they could survive the exposure, and spectacularly failing.
The theory was then advanced that, since the experimental subjects were mostly adults, the altered genome was fighting against an already established phoneme to catastrophic effect. It was suggested that the procedure be tried using infants.
I know, I know, but remember that the US was fighting, so it said, monsters who would cheerfully murder American babies-and if the cost of fighting them was to do likewise then what were the odds?
In any case, once the idea was mentioned, some bright spark remembered some research that had been done more than twenty years before, in that previous period of venal Republican numbskullery, the 1980s.
The precise same experiments, it transpired, had been conducted under something called the Janus Project, under the aegis of a Secret Service offshoot calling itself Section Eight. And yeah, but of course, didn’t that lead to a lot of bureaucratic confusion. Intentionally so. It kept the Project buried under disinformation.
The Janus Project had been reckoned to be a failure, too. The subjects either spontaneously mutated into monstrous et cetera, or absolutely nothing seemed to happen to them at all. Those who survived were dispersed in a manner that wouldn’t arouse undue attention, as opposed to merely killing them, and the Project was quietly wrapped up.
Twenty years later, when they went through the files and tracked down the survivors, the government found a small surprise. The science of genetics had advanced more than somewhat-and they found some really freaky things happening with the survivors’ junk DNA. And the interesting thing about that was that it was generational. The survivors had passed the modifications on to their kids.
So, of course, there was nothing for it but to haul that second generation of kids in and start the whole procedure of exposing them all over again.
The problem was that, once again, the Project failed. Oh, fewer of the kids actually died, but nothing much else happened either. The Government gave up, dumped people like you out in various out-of-the-way shitholes, decided to go back to being a glorified gun-runner and washed its hands of the whole sorry business.
So, basically, after all that work and effort, all that suffering, the whole thing just turned out to be totally without meaning and pointless. Oh, well. You gotta laugh, eh?
20.
The communications lockdown of Arbitrary Base did not, of course, extend to official GenTech traffic. In his spartan quarters in the San Angeles Factory, Masterton was now in the process of conversing with Trix Desoto via secured and scrambled satellite phone.
“So you put our Mister Kalish together with the Talking Head?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Trix Desoto. “He was getting somewhat vehement. Seemed like the best thing to do at the time.”
“Well, I’m just thanking Christ that I remembered to seriously downgrade its access and capacity,” said Masterton. “He should get enough of the truth to satisfy his curiosity, give him some idea of the actual state of play on top if he’s lucky and asks the right questions-but it wouldn’t do for him to learn… absolutely everything, now, would it?”
“If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, then no,” said Trix Desoto on the other end of the line. “You’d have no hold on him whatsoever if he happened to learn that particular little titbit. I think it’s safe to say that Eddie learning that particular little titbit would end up very bad for you indeed.”
“Why, do my ears deceive me, Trix,” said Masterton, “or do I hear a note of cunning speculation in your voice?”
“I’m just saying that I know for a fact that there’s some stuff you’re not telling even me,” said Trix Desoto. “You’ve got my loyalty in this-but don’t forget that I’ve got what Eddie’s got. We’re not like… basic humans, and you’re basically human, and I know the sort of deviousness that basic humans get up to. The games within games you like to play.
“I’m telling you, Masterton, that if you try to pull any of that shit with us, then Eddie Kalish learning an interesting little particular titbit is going to be the least of your worries.”
After Trix Desoto had cut the connection, Masterton just sat there for a while, doing and thinking nothing in particular. Then he raised his hands to his black wraparound shades and pulled them from his head.
The shades were inset with remote-feed microcams, hooked to an implant in his visual centre.
Masterton turned the shades around and used them to examine the strange new growths taken root and growing in the involuted ruins of what had once been his eyes.
“Basic human…” he mused to himself. “Ah, Trix, Trix, if you only knew.”
For what seemed to be a long time, Eddie just stood there looking at the Talking Head.
“And that’s it, is it?” he said at last. “That’s all there is?”
“ You got your special secret origin, ” said the Talking Head, “ plus an explanation for why you don’t quite seem to fit into the world. Why you have problems relating to other human beings on even the most basic level. What more do you fucking want? ”
“Well for one thing,” said Eddie. “You’ve just gone out of your way to tell me what happened to me as a kid and then pull the rug out from under me and tell me it’s totally meaningless.
“You and-well, you -never seem to lose an opportunity to tell me how insignificant I am in the greater scheme of things, how I’m basically nothing but an ambulatory tool… but that’s not strictly true is it? There’s something more that you’re still not telling me.”
“ Do you realise, ” said the Talking Head, “ that you managed to get through that entire little speech without saying the word ‘fuck’ once? I have to admit that I’m rather impressed. ”
“Fuck being rather impressed!” Eddie shouted. “Stop trying to deflect the question and answer! Tool I might be, but I’ve got a function that for some reason is incredibly valuable to you and GenTech-and you’re gonna fucking well tell me what the fuck it is!”
“ Well, if you’re going to be like that, ” said the Head, “ then I’m telling you, yet again, that you simply don’t Need to Know. All you need to know is how to do what we tell you, when we tell you. We have… ways of teaching you, if you can’t get that little fact through your head. ”
“Oh yes?” said Eddie, softly. “I’d like to see you try.”
(It would be later, looking back, that he would realise that this was the point that several technicians in the Command Module started backing away from him in startled alarm. Pressing themselves against the walls in the cold fear of prey finding some predator suddenly dropped into the middle of their enclosure. Replaying the scene, mnemonically, he would recall image-flashes of the muscles of his arms visibly swelling and bulking, his hands elongating into claws. At the time, he simply didn’t notice.)
“Let me guess how that might work,” Eddie continued, all unaware that his voice was roughening into a snarl. “You threaten to overdose me with the Leash to the point where I simply can’t flip out whatsoever happens, then shoot me in the head if I don’t follow orders. I suspect that either way-and whether you shoot me in the head or not-that would mess up whatever it is you want me for.”