“Oh, both hit the subconscious,” Ina said. “Rico has the same nightmare I do, about finding someone got to my credit records and deeveed everything I worked for all my life. And I don’t stand a prayer of finding out who’s responsible.” She turned to face her daughter squarely. “What’s more … Kate, I never dared tell you this before, but when I was pregnant with you I was so terrified you might not—uh—come out right, I—”
“You overloaded a few years later, and after that you were obsessively worried about me, and when I grew up you still worried because I’m a nonconformist. And I’m plain too. So what? I’m bright and I bounce. I’m a credit to any mother. Ask Nick,” she added with a mischievous grin.
Freeman glanced around. “Nick? You recovered from your prejudice against the name, then—Old Nick, Saint Nicholas and the rest?”
“As well as being the patron saint of thieves, Saint Nicholas is credited with reviving three murdered children. It’s a fair human-type compromise.”
“You’ve changed,” Freeman said soberly. “In a lot of ways. And … and the result is kind of impressive.”
“I owe much of it to you. If I hadn’t been derailed from the course I’d followed all my life—You know, that’s what’s wrong with us on the public level. We fret about how to keep going the same old way when we should be casting around for another way that’s better. Our society is hurtling in free fall toward heaven knows where, and as a result we’ve developed collective osteochalcolysis of the personality.”
“The way to go faster is to slow down,” Kate said with conviction.
Freeman’s brow furrowed. “Yes, perhaps. But how do we choose this better direction?”
“We don’t have to. It’s programed.”
“How can that possibly be true?”
Rico Posta spoke up in a strained tone. “I didn’t believe it either, not at first. Now I have to. I’ve seen the evidence.” He took an angry swig of his drink. “Hell, here I am allegedly vice-president in charge of long-term corporate planning, and I didn’t know that G2S’s social-extrapolation programs automatically mouse into a bunch of federal studies from Crediton Hill! Isn’t that crazy? It was set up by my last-but-two predecessor, that system, and he left under a cloud and omitted to advise the poker who took over. Nick got to it with no trouble, and he’s taken me on a guided tour of a section of the net I didn’t know existed.”
Pointing with a shaking hand, he concluded furiously: “On that goddamn veephone right over there! I feel sick, just sick. If a veep for G2S can’t find out what’s happening under his nose, what chance do ordinary people have?”
“I wish I’d been here,” Freeman said after a pause. “What do these Crediton Hill studies indicate?”
“Oh …” Posta took a deep breath. “More or less this: the cost of staying out front—economically, in terms of prestige, and so forth—has been to invoke the counterpart of the athlete’s ‘second wind,’ which burns up muscle tissue. You can’t keep that up forever. And what we’ve been burning is people who could have been useful, talented members of society if the pressure had been less intense. As it was, they turned to crime or suicide or went insane.”
Freeman said slowly, “I remember thinking that I could easily have taken to peddling dope. But I can’t see the world the way you do, can I? I owe to the people who recruited me for Weychopee the fact that I didn’t wind up in jail or an early grave.”
“Is our society on the right lines when one of its most gifted people can find no better career than crime unless literally millions per year of public money are lavished on him?”
Nick waited for an answer to that question. None came.
Around them the party was in full swing. The coley dancers had the measure of the unit. Their numbers had trebled without causing more than an occasional screech, and their chord pattern had evolved into a full AABA chorus of thirty-two bars, still in the key of the original blues though one of the more adventurous girls was trying to modulate into the minor. Unfortunately someone else was trying to impose triple time. The effect was … interesting.
Watching the dance, Freeman said helplessly, “Oh, what difference does it make whether I agree or not? I gave you your U-group codes. I knew damn well that was like handing you an H-bomb, and I went right ahead. I only wish I could believe in what you’re doing. You sound like an economist—worse, like a nihilist, planning to bring the temple pillars down around our ears.”
“The name for what we’re doing wasn’t coined by any kind of radical.”
“It has a name?”
“Sure it does,” Kate said firmly. “Agonizing reappraisal.”
Nick nodded. “During all my time at Tarnover it was drummed into me that I must search for wisdom. It’s the beginning of wisdom when you admit you’ve gone astray.”
The coley dancers dissolved into discords and laughter. As they scattered in search of fresh drinks they complimented one another on the length of time they had managed to keep dancing. An impatient exhibitionistic youth promptly jumped up and conjured a specialty number from the invisible beams. After the complexities of the nine-part dance it seemed thin and shallow in spite of being technically brilliant.
“Sweedack,” Freeman said eventually, his face glistening with sweat. “I guess now we hold tight and wait for the tsunami.”
THE RACE BETWEEN GUNS AND ARMOR
On the tree of evolution, last season’s flowers die, and often the most beautiful are sterile.
While Triceratops sported his triple horns, while Diplodocus waved his graceful tail, something without a name was stealing their tomorrow.
AN ALARMING ITEM TO FIND ON YOUR OVERNIGHT MAIL-STORE REEL
Origin: Tarnover Bioexperimental Laboratory
Reference: K3/E2/100715 P
Subject: In-vitro genetic modification (project #38)
Nature: Controlled crossover in gamete union
Surgeons: Dr. Jason B. Saville, Dr. Maud Crowther
Biologist i/c: Dr. Phoebe R. Whymper
Mother: Anon. volunt. GOL ($800 p.w., 1 yr.)
Father: Staff volunt. WVG ($1,000, flat pmt.)
Embryo: Female
Gestation:—11 days
Survival time: appx. 67 hr.
Description: Typical class G0 and G9 faults, viz. cyclopean eye, cleft palate, open fontanelle, digestive system incomplete, anal-vaginal fusion, pelvic deformities and all toes absent. Cf. project #6.
Conclusion: Programed inducement of crossover only partially successful employing template solution #17K.
Recommendation: Repeat but attempt layering of template on crystalline substrate (in hand) or use of gel version (in hand).
Disposition of remains: Authorized (initialed JBS).
AN ALARMING ITEM TO FIND ON YOUR CREDIT-RATING STATEMENT
Inspection of computerized records has revealed that over half the credit standing to your name derives from nonlegal undertakings, details of which have been forwarded to the Attorney General of the United States. In anticipation of criminal proceedings your permissible credit is limited to the Federal Supportive Norm, viz. $28.50 per day.
The Commission on Poverty has held this insufficient to provide an adequate diet; however, upgrading to the proposed norm of $67.50 per day still awaits presidential approval.
This is a cybernetic datum for the public service.
AN ALARMING ITEM TO FIND ON YOUR DESK COME MONDAY MORNING