"Comfortable?"
"It's up to you, of course."
So I got in my car and drove dutifully up the highway, past Independence Day bunting (the fourth was tomorrow) and street-corner flag merchants (unlicensed, ready to bolt in their weathered pickups), rehearsing in my mind all the go-to-hell speeches I had ever imagined myself delivering to E. D. Lawton. By the time I reached the Hilton the sun was lost behind the rooftops and the lobby clock said 8:35.
E.D. was at a booth in the bar, drinking determinedly. He looked surprised to see me. Then he stood up, grabbed my arm, and steered me to the vinyl bench across the table from him.
"Drink?"
"I won't be here that long."
"Have a drink, Tyler. It'll improve your attitude."
"Has it improved yours? Just tell me what you want, E.D."
"I know a man's angry when he makes my name sound like an insult. What are you so pissed about? That thing with your girlfriend and the doctor, what's his name, Malmstein? Look, I want you to know I didn't arrange that. I didn't even sign off on it. I had a zealous staff working for me. Things were done in my name. Just so you know."
"That's a poor excuse for shitty behavior."
"I guess it is. Guilty as charged. I apologize. Can we move on to other things?"
I might have walked out then. I suppose the reason I stayed was the aura of desperate anxiety seeping out of him. E.D. was still capable of that brand of thoughtless condescension that had so endeared him to his family. But he was no longer confident. In the silence between vocal outbursts his hands were restless. He stroked his chin, folded and unfolded a cocktail napkin, smoothed his hair. This particular silence expanded until he was halfway through a second drink. Which was probably more than his second. The waitress had cycled past with a breezy familiarity.
"You have some influence with Jason," he said finally.
"If you want to talk to Jason, why not do it directly?"
"Because I can't. For obvious reasons."
"Then what do you want me to tell him?"
E.D. stared at me. Then he looked at his drink. "I want you to tell him to pull the plug on the replicator project. I mean literally. Turn off the refrigeration. Kill it."
Now it was my turn to be incredulous.
"You must know how unlikely that is."
"I'm not stupid, Tyler."
"Then why—"
"He's my son."
"You figured that out?"
"Because we had political arguments he's suddenly not my son? You think I'm so shallow I can't make that distinction? That because I don't agree with him I don't love him?"
"All I know about you is what I've seen."
"You've seen nothing." He started to say something else, then reconsidered. "Jason is a pawn for Wun Ngo Wen," he said. "I want him to wake up and understand what's happening."
"You raised him to be a pawn. Your pawn. You just don't like seeing someone else with that kind of influence over him."
"Bullshit. Bullshit. I mean, no, all right, we're confessing here, maybe it's true, I don't know, maybe we all need some family therapy, but that's not the point. The point is that every powerful person in this country happens to be in love with Wun Ngo Wen and his fucking replicator project. For the obvious reason that it's cheap and it looks plausible to the voting public. And who cares if it doesn't work because nothing else works and if nothing works then the end is nigh and everybody's problems will look different when the red sun rises. Right? Isn't that right? They dress it up, they call it a wager or gamble, but it's really just sleight-of-hand for the purpose of distracting the rubes."
"Interesting analysis," I said, "but—"
"Would I be here talking to you if I thought this was an interesting analysis! Ask the appropriate questions, if you want to argue with me."
"Such as?"
"Such as, who exactly is Wun Ngo Wen? Who does he represent, and what does he really want? Because despite what they say on television he's not Mahatma Gandhi in a Munchkin package. He's here because he wants something from us. He's wanted it from day one."
"The replicator launch."
"Obviously."
"Is that a crime?"
"A better question would be, why don't the Martians do this launch themselves?"
"Because they can't presume to speak on behalf of the entire solar system. Because a work like this can't be undertaken unilaterally."
He rolled his eyes. "Those are things people say, Tyler. Talking about multilateralism and diplomacy is like saying 'I love you'—it serves to facilitate the fucking. Unless, of course, the Martians really are angelic spirits descended from heaven to deliver us from evil. Which I presume you don't believe."
Wun had denied it so often that I could hardly object.
"I mean look at their technology. These guys have been doing high-end biotech for something like a thousand years. If they wanted to populate the galaxy with nanobots they could have done it a long time ago. So why didn't they? Ruling out explanations that depend on their better nature, why? Obviously, because they're afraid of a reprisal."
"Reprisal from the Hypotheticals? They don't know anything about the Hypotheticals we don't know."
"So they claim. Doesn't mean they're not afraid of them. As for us—we're the assholes who launched a nuclear strike on the polar artifacts not that long ago. Yeah, we'll take the responsibility, why not? Jesus, look at it, Tyler. It's a classic setup. It could hardly be more slick."
"Or maybe you're paranoid."
"Am I? Who defines paranoia this far into the Spin? We're all paranoid. We all know there are malevolent, powerful forces controlling our lives, which is pretty much the definition of paranoia."
"I'm just a GP," I said. "But intelligent people tell me—"
"You're talking about Jason, of course. Jason tells you it'll all be okay."
"Not just Jason. The whole Lomax administration. Most of Congress "
"But they depend on the wonks for advice. And the wonks are as hypnotized by all this as Jason is. You want to know what motivates your friend Jason? Fear. He's afraid of dying ignorant. The situation we're in, if he dies ignorant, it means the human race dies ignorant. And that scares the living shit out of him, the idea that a whole arguably intelligent species can be erased from the universe without ever understanding why or what for. Maybe instead of diagnosing my paranoia you ought to think about Jason's delusions of grandeur. He's made it his mission to figure out the Spin before he dies. Wun shows up and hands him a tool he can use to that end and of course he buys it: it's like handing a matchbook to a pyromaniac."
"Do you really want me to tell him this?"
"I don't—" E.D. looked suddenly morose, or maybe it was just his blood alcohol peaking. "I thought, because he listens to you—"
"You know better than that."
He closed his eyes. "Maybe I do. I don't know. But I have to try. Do you see that? For the sake of my conscience." I was startled that he had confessed to having one. "Let me be frank with you. I feel like I'm watching a train wreck in slow motion. The wheels are off the track and the driver hasn't noticed. So what do I do? Is it too late to pull the alarm? Too late to yell 'duck'? Probably so. But he's my son, Tyler. The man driving the train is my son."
"He's in no more danger than the rest of us."
"I think that's wrong. Even if this thing succeeds, all we stand to get out of it is abstract information. That's good enough for Jason. But it's not good enough for the rest of the world. You don't know Preston Lomax. I do. Lomax would be more than happy to tag Jason with a failure and hang him for it. A lot of people in his administration want Perihelion closed down or turned over to the military. And those are best-case outcomes. Worst case, the Hypotheticals get annoyed and turn off the Spin."