The Eyes of Heisenberg

15.

Where the last skyway ended, the van took the turn away from the undermountain tube, and held to the wide surface track on the Lester by-way. It led upward through old tunnels to the wilderness reserve and breeder-leave resorts along an almost deserted air-blasted roadbed. There were no slavelights up here, only the moon and the stabbing cyclops beam of the van’s headlight.

An occasional omnibus passed them on the down-track, the passenger seats occupied by silent, moody couples, their breeder-leave ended, heading back to the megalopolis. If any of them focused on the van, it was dismissed as a supply carrier for the resorts.

On a banked curve below the Homish Resort Complex, the Cyborg driver made a series of adjustments to his lift controls. Venturis narrowed. Softness went out of the ride. Turbines whined upward to a near destructive keening. The van turned off the roadbed.

Within the narrow box that concealed them, Harvey Durant clutched the bench with one hand and Lizbeth with the other as the van lurched and bounced across the eroded mounds of an ancient railroad right of way, crashed through a screen of alders and turned onto a game track that followed the right of way upward through buck brush and rhododendrons.

“What’s happening?” Lizbeth wailed.

The driver’s voice rasped through the speaker, “We have left the road. There is nothing to fear.”

Nothing to fear, Harvey thought. The idea appeared so ludicrous he had to suppress a chuckle which he realized might be near hysteria.

The driver had turned off all exterior lights and was relying now on the moon and his infrared vision.

The Cyborg-boosted vision revealed the trail as a snail track through the brush. The van gulped this track for two kilometers, leaving a dusty, leaf-whirling wake to a point where the game trail intersected a forest patrol road—a cleared track matted with dead sallow and bracken from the passage of the patrol vehicles. Here, it turned right like a great hissing prehistoric monster, labored up a hill, roared down the other side and to the top of another hill where it stopped.

Turbines whined down to silence and the van settled onto its skids. The driver emerged, a blocky stub-legged figure with glittering prosthetic arms attached for its present needs. A side panel was ripped off and the Cyborg began unloading cargo, tossing it indiscriminately down through a stand of hemlock into a deep gully.

Within their compartment, Igan lurched to his feet, put his mouth near the speaker-phone, hissed, “Where are we?”

Silence.

“That was stupid,” Harvey said. “How do you know why he’s stopped?”

Igan ignored the insult. It came after all from a semi-educated dolt. “You can hear him shifting cargo,” Igan said. He leaned across Harvey, pounded a palm against the compartment’s side. “What’s going on out there?”

“Oh, sit down,” Harvey said. He put a hand on Igan’s chest, pushed. The surgeon stumbled backward onto the opposite bench.

Igan started to bounce back, his face dark, eyes glaring. Boumour restrained him, rumbled, “Serenity, friend Igan.”

Igan settled back. Slowly, a look of patience came over his features. “It’s odd,” he said, “how one’s emotions have a way of asserting themselves in spite of -”

“That will pass,” Boumour said.

Harvey found Lizbeth’s hand, clutched it, signaled, “Igan’s chest—it’s convex and hard as plasmeld. I felt it under his jacket.”

“You think he’s Cyborg?”

“He breathes normally.”

“And he has emotions. I read fear on him.”

“Yes… but…”

“We will be careful.”

Boumour said, “You should place more trust in us, Durant. Doctor Igan had deduced that our driver would not be moving cargo unless certain sounds were safe.”

“How do we know who’s moving cargo?” Harvey asked.

A look of caution fled across Boumour’s massive calm.

Harvey read it, smiled.

“Harvey!” Lizbeth said. “You don’t think the -”

“It’s our driver out there,” Harvey reassured her. “I can smell the wilderness in the air. There’s been no sound of a struggle. One doesn’t take a Cyborg without a struggle.”

“But where are we?” she asked.

“In the mountains, the wilderness,” Harvey said. “From the feel of the ride, we’re well off the main by-ways.”

Abruptly, their compartment lurched, slid sideways. The single light was extinguished. In the sudden darkness, the wall behind Harvey dropped away. He clutched Lizbeth, whirled, found himself looking out into darkness… moonlight… their driver a blocky shadow against a distant panorama of the megalopolis with its shimmering networks of light. The moon silvered the tops of trees below them and there was a sharp smell of forest duff, resinous, dank, churned up by the van and not yet settled. The wilderness lay silent as though waiting, analyzing the intrusion.

“Out,” the driver said.

The Cyborg turned. Harvey saw the features suddenly illuminated by moonlight, said, “Glisson!”

“Greetings, Durant,” Glisson said.

“Why you?” Harvey asked.

“Why not?” Glisson asked. “Get out of there now.”

Harvey said: “But my wife isn’t -”

“I know about your wife, Durant. She’s had plenty of time since the treatment. She can walk if she doesn’t exert herself.”

Igan spoke at Harvey’s ear, “She’ll be quite all right. Sit her up gently and help her down.”

“I… feel all right,” Lizbeth said. “Here.” She put an arm over Harvey’s shoulder. Together, they slid down to the ground.

Igan followed, asked, “Where are we?”

“We are someplace headed for someplace else,” Glisson said. “What is the condition of our prisoner?”

Boumour spoke from within the compartment, “He’s coming around. Help me lift him out.”

“Why’ve we stopped?” Harvey asked.

“There is steep climbing ahead,” Glisson said. “We’re dropping the load. A van isn’t built for this work.”

Boumour and Igan shouldered past them carrying Svengaard, propped him against a stump beside the track.

“Wait here while I disengage the trailer,” Glisson said. “You might be considering whether we should abandon Svengaard.”

Hearing his name, Svengaard opened his eyes, found himself staring out and down at the distant lights of the megalopolis. His jaw ached where Harvey had struck him and there was a throbbing in his head. He felt hungry, thirsty. His hands were numb beyond the bindings. A dry smell of evergreen needles filled his nostrils. He sneezed.

“Perhaps we should get rid of Svengaard,” Igan said.

“I think not,” Boumour said. “He’s a trained man, a possible ally. We’re going to need trained men.”

Svengaard looked toward the voices. They stood beside the van which was a long silvery shape behind a stubby double cab. A wrenching of metal sounded there. The trailer slid backward on its skids almost two meters before stopping against a mound of dirt.

Glisson returned, squatted beside Svengaard. “What is our decision?” asked the Cyborg. “Kill him or keep him?”

Harvey gulped, felt Lizbeth clutch his arm.

“Keep him yet awhile,” Boumour said.

“If he causes no more trouble,” Igan said.

“We could always use his parts,” Glisson said. “Or try to grow a new Svengaard and retrain it.” The Cyborg stood. “An immediate decision isn’t necessary. It is a thing to consider.”

Svengaard remained silent, frozen by the emotionless clarity of the man’s speech. A hard, brutal man, he thought. A tough man, prepared for any violence. A killer.

“Into the cab with him then,” Glisson said. “Everyone into the cab. We must get…” The Cyborg broke off, stared out toward the megalopolis.

Svengaard turned toward the strings of blue-white light glittering far away and cold. A winking golden flare had appeared amidst the lights on his left. Another blazed up beyond it—a giant’s bonfire set against the background of distant, moon-frosted mountains. More yellow flares appeared to the right. A bone-chilling rattle of sonics shook him, jarred a sympathetic metal dissonance from the van.

“What’s happening?” Lizbeth hissed.

“Quiet!” Glisson said. “Be quiet and observe.”

“Gods of life,” Lizbeth whispered, “what is it?”

“It is the death of a megalopolis,” Boumour said.

Again, sonics rattled the van.

“That hurts,” Lizbeth whimpered.

Harvey pulled her close, muttered, “Damn them!”

“Up here it hurts,” Igan said, his voice chillingly formal. “Down there it kills.”

Green fog began emerging from the wilderness some ten kilometers below them. It rolled out and down like a furious downy sea beneath the moon, engulfing everything—hills, the gem-like lights, the yellow flares.

“Did you think they would use the death fog?” Boumour asked.

“We knew they would use it,” Glisson said.

“I suppose so,” Boumour said. “Sterilize the area.”

“What is it?” Harvey demanded.

“It comes from the vents where they administered the contraceptive gas,” Boumour said. “One particle on your skin—the end of you.”

Igan moved around, stared down at Svengaard. “They are the ones who love us and care for us,” he mocked.

“What’s happening?” Svengaard asked.

“Can you not hear?” Igan asked. “Can you not see? Your friends the Optimen are sterilizing Seatac. Did you have friends there?”

“Friends?” There was a broken quality to Svengaard’s voice. He turned back to stare at the green fog. The distant lights had all been extinguished.

Again, sonics chattered through them, shook the ground, rattled the van.

“What do you think of them now?” Igan asked.

Svengaard shook his head, unable to speak. He wondered why he had no sensory fuse system to shut off this scene. He felt chained to awareness through sense organs gone abnormal beyond any previous experience… a permissive aberration. His senses were deceiving him, that was it. This was a special case of self-deception.

“Why don’t you answer me?” Igan asked.

“Leave him alone,” Harvey said. “We’ve griefs of our own. Haven’t you any feelings?”

“He sees it and does not believe,” Igan said.

“How could they?” Lizbeth whispered.

“Self-preservation,” Boumour rumbled. “A trait our friend Svengaard doesn’t seem to have. Perhaps it was cut out of him.”

Svengaard stared at the rolling green cloud. So silent and stealthy it was. The great reach of darkness where once there had been light and life filled him with a raw awareness of his own mortality. He thought of friends down there—the hospital staff—embryos, his playmate-wife.

All destroyed.

Svengaard felt emptied, incapable of any emotion—even grief. He could only question, What was their purpose?

“Into the cab with him,” Glisson said. “On the floor in the rear.”

Ungentle hands lifted Svengaard—he identified Boumour and Glisson. The driver’s unemotional quality confused Svengaard. He had never before encountered quite that abstract detachment in a human being.

They pushed him onto the floor of the van’s cab. The sharp edge of a seat brace dug into his side. Feet came in around him. Someone put a foot on his stomach, recoiled. The turbines came alive. A door was slammed. They glided into motion.

Svengaard sank into a kind of stupor.

Lizbeth seated above him heaved a deep sigh. Hearing it, Svengaard was roused to a feeling of compassion for her, his first emotion since the shock of seeing the megalopolis die.

Why did they do it? he asked himself. Why?

In the darkness, Lizbeth gripped Harvey’s hand. She could see in an occasional patch of moonglow the outline of Glisson directly ahead of her. The Cyborg’s minimal movement, the sense of power in every action, filled her with growing disquiet. The scar of her operation itched. She wanted to scratch, but feared calling attention to herself. The Courier Service had been a long time building its own organization, deceiving both the Cyborgs and the Optimen. They’d done it partly through self-effacement. Now, in her fear, she sank back into that treatment.

Through their hands, Harvey signaled, “Boumour and Igan, I read them now. They’re new Cyborgs. Probably just a first linkage with implanted computers. They’re just learning the price, shedding their normal human emotional reactions, learning to counterfeit emotion.”

She absorbed this, seeing them through Harvey’s deduction. He often read people better than she did. She re-read what she had seen of the two surgeons.

“Do you read it?” he signaled.

“You’re right. Yes.”

“It means a total break with Central. They can never go back.”

“That explains Seatac,” she signaled. She began to tremble.

“And we can’t trust them,” Harvey said. He pressed her close, soothing her.

The van labored up through the foothills skirting open meadows, following ancient tracks, an occasional stream-bed. Shortly before dawn, it swerved left down a firebreak and into a stand of pines and cedars, squeezed its way through a narrow lane there with its blowers kicking up a heavy cloud of forest duff behind. Glisson pulled to a stop behind an old building, moss on its sides, small curtained windows. Pseudo-ducks with a weedy patina and grass-grown signs that they hadn’t been animated in years, made a short file near the building—pale moon-figures in the light of a single bulb high up under the building’s eaves.

Turbines whined to silence. They could hear then the hum of machinery and looking toward the sound saw the dull silver outline of a ventilator tower among the trees.

A door at the corner of the building opened. A heavy-headed man with a big jaw, stoop-shouldered, emerged blowing his nose into a red handkerchief. He looked old, his face a mask of subservience.

Glisson said, “It’s the sign. All is safe here… for the moment.” He slipped out, approached the old man, coughed.

“A lot of sickness around these days,” the old man said. His voice was as ancient as his face, wheezing, slurring the consonants.

“You’re not the only one with troubles,” Glisson said.

The old man straightened, shed the stooped look and subservient manner. “S’pose you’re wanting a hidey hole,” he said. “Don’t know if it’s safe here. Don’t even know if I oughta hide you.”

“I will give the orders here,” Glisson said. “You will obey.”

The old man studied Glisson a moment, then a look of anger washed over his face. “You damn’ Cyborgs!” he said.

“Hold your tongue,” Glisson said, his voice flat. “We need food, a safe place to spend the day. I shall require your help in hiding this van. You must know the surrounding terrain. And you will arrange other transportation for us.”

“Best cut it up and bury it,” the old man said, his voice surly. “Been a hornet’s nest stirred up. Guess you know that.”

“We know,” Glisson said. He turned, beckoned to the van. “Come along. Bring Svengaard.”

Presently, the others joined him. Boumour and Igan supported Svengaard between them. The bindings on Svengaard’s feet had been released, but he appeared barely able to stand. Lizbeth walked with the bent-over care that said she wasn’t sure her incision had healed despite the enzymic speed-up medication.

“We will lodge here during daylight,” Glisson said. “This man will direct you to quarters.”

“What word from Seatac?” Igan asked.

Glisson looked at the old man, said, “Answer.”

The oldster shrugged. “Courier through here couple of hours ago. Said no survivors.”

“Any report on a Dr. Potter?” Svengaard croaked.

Glisson whirled, stared at Svengaard.

“Dunno,” the old man said. “What route he take?”

Igan cleared his throat, glanced at Glisson, then at the old man. “Potter? I believe he was in the group coming out by the power tubes.”

The old man flicked a glance at the ventilator tower growing more distinct among the trees by the second as daylight crept across the mountains. “Nobody come through the tubes,” he said. “They shut off the ventilators and flooded the tubes with that gas first thing.” He looked at Igan, “Ventilators been going again for about three hours.”

Glisson studied Svengaard, asked, “Why are you interested in Potter?”

Svengaard remained silent.

“Answer me!” Glisson ordered.

Svengaard tried to swallow. His throat ached. He felt driven into a corner. Glisson’s words enraged him. Without warning, Svengaard lurched forward dragging Igan and Boumour, lashed out at Glisson with a foot.

The Cyborg dodged with a blurring movement, caught the foot, jerked Svengaard from the two surgeons, whirled, swung Svengaard wide and released him. Svengaard landed on his back, skidded across the ground, stopped. Before he could move, Glisson was standing over him. Svengaard lay there sobbing.

“Why are you interested in Potter?” Glisson demanded.

“Go away, go away, go away!” Svengaard sobbed.

Glisson straightened, looked around at Igan and Boumour. “You understand this?”

Igan shrugged. “It’s emotion.”

“Perhaps a shock reaction,” Boumour said.

Through their hands, Harvey signaled Lizbeth, “He’s been in shock, but this mean’s he’s coming out of it. These are medical people! Can’t they read anything?”

“Glisson reads it,” she answered. “He was testing them.”

Glisson turned around, looked squarely at Harvey. The bold understanding in the Cyborg’s eyes shot a pang of fear through Harvey.

“Careful,” Lizbeth signaled. “He’s suspicious of us.”

“Take Svengaard inside,” Glisson said.

Svengaard looked up at their driver. Glisson, the Durants called him. But the old man from the building had labeled Glisson a Cyborg. Was it possible? Were the half-men being revived to challenge the Optimen once more? Was that the reason for Seatac’s death?

Boumour and Igan lifted him, checked the fetters on his hands. “Let’s have no more foolishness,” Boumour said.

Are they like Glisson? Svengaard asked himself. Are they, too, part man, part machine? And what about the Durants?

Svengaard could feel the tear dampness in his eyes. Hysteria, he thought. Coming out of shock. He began to wonder at himself then with an odd feeling of guilt. Why does Potter’s death strike me more deeply than the death of an entire megalopolis, the extinction of my wife and friends? What did Potter symbolize to me?

Boumour and Igan half carried, half walked him into the building, down a narrow hall and into a poorly lighted, gloomy big room with a ceiling that went up to bare beams two stories above. They dropped him onto a dusty couch—bare plastic and hydraulic contour-shapers that adjusted reluctantly. The light came from two glowglobes high up under the beams. It exposed oddments of furniture scattered around the room and mounds of strange shapes covered by slick, glistening fabric. A table to his left, he realized, was made of planks. Wood! A contour cot lay beyond it, and an ancient roll-top desk with a missing drawer, and mismatched chairs. A stained, soot-blackened fireplace, with an iron crane reaching across its mouth like a gibbet, occupied half the wall across from him. The entire room smelled of dampness and rot. The floor creaked as people moved. Wood flooring!

Svengaard looked up at tiny windows admitting a sparse gray daylight that grew brighter by the second. Even at its brightest he knew it wouldn’t dispel the gloom of this place. Here was sadness that made him think of people without number—dead, forgotten. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

What’s wrong with me? he wondered.

There came a sound from the yard of the van’s turbines being ignited. He heard it lift, leave… fade away. Harvey and Lizbeth entered the room.

Lizbeth looked at Svengaard, then at Boumour and Igan who had taken up vigil on the cot. With her crouched, protective walk, she crossed to Svengaard, touched his shoulder. She saw his tears, evidence of humanity, and she wished then that he were her doctor. Perhaps there was a way. She decided to ask Harvey.

“Please trust us,” she said. “We won’t harm you. They are the ones who killed your wife and friends, not us.”

Svengaard pulled away.

How dare she have pity on me? he thought. But she had reached some chord in him. He could feel himself shattering.

Oppressive silence settled over the room.

Harvey came up, guided his wife to a chair at the table.

“It’s wood,” she said, touching the surface, wonder in her voice. Then, “Harvey, I’m very hungry.”

“They’ll bring food as soon as they’ve disposed of the van,” he said.

She clutched his hand and Svengaard watched, fascinated by the nervous movement of her fingers.

Glisson and the old man returned presently, slamming the door behind them. The building creaked with their movement.

“We’ll have a forest patrol vehicle for the next stage,” Glisson said. “Much safer. There’s a thing you all should know now.” The Cyborg moved a cold, weighted stare from face to face. “There was a marker on top of the van’s load section which we abandoned last night.”

“Marker?” Lizbeth said.

“A device for tracing us, following us,” Glisson said.

“Ohhh!” Lizbeth put a hand over her mouth.

“I do not know how closely they were following,” Glisson said. “I was altered for this task and certain of my devices were left behind. They may know where we are right now.”

Harvey shook his head. “But why…?”

“Why haven’t they moved against us?” Glisson asked. “It’s obvious. They hope we’ll lead them to the vitals of our organization.” Something like rage came into the Cyborg’s features. “It may be we can surprise them.”