Boumour stirred out of a profound lethargy. The as-yet alien computer logic within him had recorded the conversation, replayed it, derived corollary meanings. He looked up now as a new and partial Cyborg, read the subtle betrayals in Optiman flesh. The thing was there! Something had gone wrong with the live-forevers. The shock of it left Boumour with a half-formed feeling of emptiness, as though he ought to respond with some emotion for which he no longer had the capacity.
“Their words,” Nourse said. “I find their conversation mostly meaningless. What is it they’re saying, Schruille?”
“Let us ask them now about the self-viables,” Calapine said. “And the substitute embryo. Don’t forget the substitute embryo.”
“Look up there in the top row,” Glisson said. “The tall one. See the wrinkles on his face?”
“He looks so old,” Lizbeth whispered. She felt a curiously empty feeling. As long as the Optimen were there—unchangeable, eternal—her world contained a foundation that could never tremble. Even as she’d opposed them, she’d felt this. Cyborgs died… eventually. The Folk died. But Optimen went on and on and on…
“What is it?” Svengaard asked. “What’s happening to them?”
“Second row on the left,” Glisson said. “The woman with red hair. See the sunken eyes, the stare?”
Boumour moved his eyes to see the woman. Flaws in Optiman flesh leaped out as his gaze traversed the short arc permitted him.
“What’re they saying?” Calapine demanded. “What is this?” Her voice sounded querulous even to her own ears. She felt fretful, annoyed by vague aches.
A muttering sound of discontent moved upward through the benches. There were little pockets of giggling and bursts of peevish anger, laughter.
We’re supposed to interrogate these criminals, Calapine thought. When will it start? Must I begin it?
She looked at Schruille. He had scrunched down in his seat, glaring at Harvey Durant. She turned to Nourse, encountered a supercilious half-smile on his face, a remote look in his eyes. There was a throbbing at Nourse’s neck she had never noticed before. A mottled patch of red veins stood out on his cheek.
They leave everything to me, she thought.
With a fretful movement of her shoulders, she touched her bracelet controls. Lambent purple light washed over the giant globe at the side of the hall. A beam of the light spilled out from the globe’s top as though decanted onto the floor. It reached out toward the prisoners.
Schruille watched the play of light. Soon the prisoners would be raw, shrieking creatures, he knew, spilling out all their knowledge for the Tuyere’s instruments to analyze. Nothing would remain of them except nerve fibers along which the burning light would spread, drinking memories, experiences, knowledge. “Wait!” Nourse said.
He studied the light. It had stopped its reaching movement toward the prisoners at his command. He felt they were making some gross error known only to himself and he looked around the abruptly silent hall wondering if any of the others could identify the error or speak it, Here was all the secret machinery of their government, everything planned, ordained. Somehow, the inelegant unexpectedness of naked Life had entered here. It was an error.
“Why do we wait?” Calapine asked. Nourse tried to remember. He knew he had opposed this action. Why? Pain!
“We must not cause pain,” he said. “We must give them the chance to speak without duress.”
“They’ve gone mad,” Lizbeth whispered.
“And we’ve won,” Glisson said. “Through my eyes, all my fellows can see—we’ve won.”
“They’re going to destroy us,” Boumour said.
“But we’ve won,” Glisson said.
“How?” Svengaard asked. And louder: “How?”
“We offered them Potter as bait and gave them a taste of violence,” Glisson said. “We knew they’d look. They had to look.”
“Why?” Svengaard whispered.
“Because we’ve changed the environment,” Glisson said. “Little things, a pressure here, a shocking Cyborg there. And we gave them a taste for war.”
“How?” Svengaard asked. “How?”
“Instinct,” Glisson said. The word carried a computed finality, a sense of inhuman logic from which there was no escape. “War’s an instinct with humans. Battle. Violence. But their systems have been maintained in delicate balance for so many thousands of years. Ah, the price they paid—tranquillity, detachment, boredom. Comes now violence with its demands and their ability to change has atrophied. They’re heterodyning, swaying farther and farther from that line of perpetual life. Soon they’ll die.”
“War?” Svengaard had heard the stories of the violence from which the Optimen preserved the Folk. “It can’t be,” he said. “There’s some new disease or -”
“I have stated the fact as computed to its ultimate decimal of logic,” Glisson said.
Calapine screamed, “What’re they saying?”
She could hear the prisoners’ words distinctly, but their meaning eluded her. They were speaking obscenities. She heard a word, registered it, but the next word replaced it in her awareness without linkage. There was no intelligent sequence. Only obscenities. She rapped Schruille’s arm. “What are they saying?”
“In a moment we will question them and discover,” Schruille said.
“Yes,” Calapine said. “The very thing.”
“How is it possible?” Svengaard breathed. He could see two couples dancing on the benches high up at the back of the hall. There were couples embracing, making love. Two Optimen began shouting at each other on his right—nose to nose. Svengaard felt that he was watching buildings fall, the earth open and spew forth flames.
“Watch them!” Glisson said.
“Why can’t they just compensate for this… change?” Svengaard demanded.
“Their ability to compensate is atrophied,” Glisson said. “And you must understand that compensation itself is a new environment. It creates even greater demands. Look at them! They’re oscillating out of control right now.”
“Make them shut up!” Calapine shouted. She leaped to her feet, advanced on the prisoners.
Harvey watched, fascinated, terrified. There was a disjointed quality in her movement, in every response—except her anger. Rage burned at him from her eyes. A violent trembling swept through his body.
“You!” Calapine said, pointing at Harvey. “Why do you stare at me and mumble? Answer!”
Harvey found himself frozen in silence, not by his fear of her anger, but by a sudden overwhelming awareness of Calapine’s age. How old was she? Thirty thousand years? Forty thousand? Was she one of the originals—eighty thousand or more years old?
“Speak up and say what you will,” Calapine commanded. “I, Calapine, order it. Show honor now and perhaps we will be lenient.”
Harvey stared, mute. She seemed unaware of the growing uproar all around.
“Durant,” Glisson said, “you must remember there are subterranean things called instincts which direct destiny with the inexorable flow of a river. This is change. See it around us. Change is the only constant.”
“But she’s dying,” Harvey said.
Calapine couldn’t make sense of his words, but she found herself touched by the tone of concern for her in his voice. She consulted her bracelet linkage with the globe. Concern! He was worried about her, about Calapine, not about himself or his futile mate!
She turned into an oddly enfolding darkness, collapsed full length on the floor with her arms outstretched toward the benches.
A mirthless chuckle escaped Glisson’s lips.
“We have to do something for them,” Harvey said. “They have to understand what they’re doing to themselves!”