“I… Look, let me buy you another drink,” Carl said lamely.
“Why, sure,” Saul said with a wobbly smile.
“Maybe a chess game later?”
“Certainly!” Saul said heartily. “This time, no quarter I’m defending the honor of normal people.” The Saul paused, quickly turned aside, and sneezed. Both Carl and Virginia jumped slightly. Then they all laughed, the tension relieved.
“Well now,” Saul said expansively as he put away his handkerchief “that’s one Percell modification I will take credit for. Tailoring in a suppression of the histamic response. Doesn’t do me any good, but you people don’t suffer as I do from pesky colds. I’ll be envying you every time Akio Matsudo releases one of his damn challenge viruses!”
But years afterward, Carl would well remember that convulsive, startling eruption, the first—but certainly not the last—time he had heard Saul’s explosive sneeze.
SAUL
Newsflash—WorldNet4—The International Olympic Committee, meeting today in Tokyo, bowed to pressure from the League of the Arc of the Sun and voted to bar genetically altered persons—so-called “Percells”—from participating in the 2064 Games in Lagos.
Members of the Progressive Bloc were the only nations to vote in opposition to the proposal. Bloc leaders Denmark, Hawaii, Indonesia, Texas, and the NearEarth Cluster emphasized their objections by withdrawing from the competition, which now promises to be the most controversial since the fractious Olympics of 2036.
Said IOC chairman Asoka Barawayandre, “The decision of these particular territories is no great surprise. They have received great numbers of Percells as immigrants from lands that no longer welcome that kind. Their national sports teams were already compromised by this questionable element.”
Members abstaining included Greater Russia, the United States of America, Royal Wales, Soviet Georgia, and the Diasporic Federation.
Observers expect the decision will be appealed to the World Court.
Saul finished reading the printout and looked up at the man who had thrust it upon him.
“For this you waste paper in a printout, Joao? You could have fast-faxed it to my console just as easily.”
Joao Quiverian was a slender, sallow-faced man with an untamable shock of black hair and a Roman, almost hawklike ornament of a nose. The man was not distracted by Saul’s banter. He insisted on an answer.
“You’d just ignore a fast-fax. I want to know right away what you think of this vote, Saul.”
“Where does my opinion matter?” Saul shrugged. “I’m disappointed the Diaspora only abstained. A worldwide federation of refugee peoples ought to take a stand on something like this. But they’re trying so hard to win acceptance that it’s really no surprise.” He handed back the sheet. “Other than that, I’d say the world is acting true to form.”
The answer obviously did not satisfy Joao, who had been made chief planetologist only three weeks ago when a freak accident killed Professor Lehman. Saul knew this had to be a frustrating time for the Brazilian, anyway. Here he was, only a few score kilometers from a truly great comet, and orders were that science would have to give way to engineering for weeks to come.
Quiverian had to rely on part-time help from Saul and a few other “amateur cometologists” who had been trained in the field as a second specialty. No doubt he looked forward to the awakening of some of the sleepers from the slot tugs and discussing cometary arcana with fully accredited peers.
Saul generally got along with the man, as long as they were discussing the primordial matter of the ancient solar system. This time, however, Quiverian was in a political mood.
“Come now, Saul. This news from Earth is important, a milestone! I had expected more out of you. An indignant protest. Perhaps a declaration that Percells are actually human beings.”
Saul was here in the planetology lab to help analyze the delicate ice cores the spacers were bringing back from Halley—the “second hat” he had been assigned because of his laboratory skills. He had not come to be goaded by Quiverian. He looped his left foot under the chair stanchion. “Come on, Joao, you wanted me to examine some organic inclusions for you. Let’s look at the sample.”
He held out his hand for the slender, sealed, eight-foot tube the Brazilian had laid on the table behind him.
But Quiverian was insistent “Nobody’s saying that these poor mutants are unhuman. Only that they were a horrible mistake. You cannot blame the people of Earth-with the nations of the Arc of the Sun in the vanguard-for calling for controls.
“I see.” Saul nodded. “Controls like banning Percells from the Olympics. What’s next, Joao? Segregated restrooms? Special drinking fountains? Ghettoes?”
Quiverian smiled. “Oh, Saul. It wasn’t just those athletic records a few Percells had broken—freakish performances that raised the ire of millions. Those were only the last straw. Your creations—”
“Not my creations.” Saul shook his head insistently.
Quiverian held up a hand. “Very well, Simon Percell’s creatures—his monsters—these people are living reminders of the arrogance of twentieth-century northern science, which nearly destroyed the world!”
Saul sighed. “Come on, Joao. You can’t blame science and the Old North for everything. True, they used up more than their share of resources, but you talk as if the nations of the Arc were completely guiltless for the Hell Century. After all, who cut down the tropical forests in spite of all the warnings? Who raised the carbon dioxide levels—”
Quiverian interrupted him, red-faced: “You think I am unaware of that, Saul? Look at my homeland, Brazil. Only now, after massive struggle, are we beginning to recover from an environmental holocaust which wiped out a third of the Earth’s species… all sacrificed at the altar of thoughtless greed.”
“Very well, then the guilt is distributed—’
“Yes, certainly. But technology itself was partly at fault! We simply barged ahead with the best of intentions”—Quiverian arched his eyebrows sardonically—”doing good to the detriment of Nature herself!”
Obviously, the man believed this, passionately. Saul found it ironic. Back before the turn of the century, the nations of the Old North had preached environmentalism to an unheeding Third World —after already reaping most of the planet’s accessible wealth. Now, the pendulum had swung. The equatorial peoples in the Arc of the Sun seemed obsessed with a mystic passion for nature that would have astonished their land-hungry grandparents.
Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people apologize to corpses?
He was spared having to reply as a thickly accented voice rose from beyond a table stacked high with core samples.
“Hey! Did I miss something? Eh? Exactly what crimes was do-gooder science responsible for? I’ll tell you which! Maybe our Brazilian friend refers to foreign doctors who came in to reduce infant mortality in countries such as his. Boom! Overpopulation. To your modern Arcist, that must have been the worst horror of them all!
Quiverian’s face colored. “Malenkov, you fat Russian hypocrite! Come out here and argue face to face like a man. You don’t have to hide; I am no Ukrainian sniper!”
“Thank the saints for that much, at least.” Nicholas Malenkov rounded the table holding a clipboard, smiling, a hulking giant of a man who moved with the grace of a wrestler, even in the awkward Coriolis tides of the gravity wheel.