Why Do Birds

C HAPTER 39

Stone and his bodyguard were crossing the lobby when a woman in a cheap coat stood up and called, "Howard!" She had two children with her, a teen-aged boy and girl. Stone glanced at her and kept walking, but she ran after him. The bodyguard intercepted her. She leaned around his arm to call, "Howard, don't you know me?" "I don't think so. My name isn't Howard, it's Ed." Her eyes filled with tears. "Howard, this is Joyce. I'm your wife. "

"Listen, you're making some mistake. Leave her alone, Al, it's all right. Ma'am, I never-" He re ached for her hand, but she drew away.

"You left me with two little kids, and I never heard a word from you, you just went. How could you do such a thing?"

"Ma'am, I'm sorry, but you're mistaken."

"I wrote you three letters, but you never answered. I had to borrow money to come here."

"Let's get out," said the bodyguard in a low voice. "There's a guy with a minicam over there, and I think this is a setup."

"You worry too much," said Stone. He tipped his hat to the woman and they left.

"Ed, we're in trouble," said Ben Abrams. "The New York Times is going to release a report tomorrow that you're a phony. "

"What?"

"They say you're a man named Howard Filerwho disappeared from his home in Pittsburgh in May, twenty oh one. They have photographs of Filer, who looks like you, and they have a statement from his wife, who says you're him."

"Well, that can't be. Oh,Jesus, that's the one that came up to me in the lobby."

"Yes, Al told me about it. And they've got the dealer who sold you that magazine."

"What magazine?"

"The old skiffy magazine you've shown people. Now this could undermine confidence in the whole Cube Project unless we do something."

"Who is this guy who says he sold me the magazine?"

"His name is Leonard Applebaum, he has a secondhand store in Dayton."

"Dayton, Ohio? I was never there."

"Well, we'll know more in a couple of days . Meanwhile, let's not worry, but it doesn't look good."

Ed's advisers were having a skull session in the penthouse.

"They've filed suit in Superior Court in Pittsburgh for desertion and nonsupport, asking a million dollars in actual damages and fifty million in punitive damages."

"We've got to either discredit them or buy them off."

"In the first place, we don't know who they are. Mrs. Filer is obviously being financed by somebody, but we haven't been able to find out who."

"Who stands to gain by this?"

"Maybe the Chinese."

"How do you figure that?"

"Well, if this scandal gives them an excuse to halt the Cube Project, and if the Earth isn't destroyed, who's going to be left after everybody else gets in the box? Chinese."

"Do you think they started the whole thing? Could they have brainwashed Ed somehow?"

"Don't even suggest it. Look, I'm not saying there's any merit to the lawsuit. She says herself that she didn't recognize Ed on the holo for ten years. Her own husband? Come on."

"He had a beard when she knew him."

"Sure, and they can put him in a computer simulation and grow any kind of beard they want on him. But the point is, is this could throw a monkey wrench in the whole project."

"What do you recommend, Sol?"

"Well, we'll move for dismissal. We can gain a little time that way, but not much. If we go to court, they're going to subject Ed to an examination by experts on the nineteen-thirties, to try to prove he isn't from then. We've got to anticipate that, and I think we should put together our own panel of whores."

"Of whores?"

"Expert witnesses. 'Whore' is the legal term. In fact, we ought to have two panels, one hostile and the other on our side. We use the second one to combat their whores, and we use the first one to anticipate what they might do in court."

Sol Meredith shook hands with Stone. "Ed, following your instructions, I've met with Mrs. Filer's attorneys to explore the possibility of a settlement, and they turned me down flat. Now this doesn't mean they won't settle, it just means they're not willing to talk about it now."

"Did you tell them we'd pay what they're asking?"

"I made that clear, and they indicated that their client wants her day in court."

"They're out to get me."

"Yes, I think that's right. We know somebody is financing this suit, and I've been able to find out that the money is being handled by Wolper and Rogers in New York, but they're acting for somebody else, and if we were able to get that far I'll bet we would find out those people are acting for somebody else too. We could pursue that, but in my opinion it would be a waste of time. We have to assume now that the case is going to court, and we have to prepare for trial."

"I think I know who the somebody is."

"Yes? Who?"

"Geoffrey Nero, an investor in Rye. He lives on Hundred Yard Drive. It isn't him, probably, but it's somebody he's connected with."

Meredith scribbled on his memopad. "What makes you think he's behind this?"

"He tried to get me to lay off about seven years ago. He broke Linda's leg to show me he meant business."

"He did?" Meredith addressed the computer. "Selina, search Geoffrey Nero, address on Hundred Yard Drive in Rye, New York. "

"Geoffrey with a G?" asked the computer.

"Yes, dear."

''Thank you. Geoffrey Nero, formerly of 100 Hundred Yard Drive, died September tenth, twenty oh seven."

"Oh, hell," said Stone.

"Selina, who were his business associates? Print out the list when you get it."

"Yes, boss. "

"We'll look into that," said Meredith, "but I don't think it will do any good, do you?"

"No."

"We're talking with Dr. Brian Letterman, the author of Why We Don't Behave Like We Should. Dr. Letterman, you believe that we human beings are programmed to believe what we're told in childhood, is that correct?"

"Well, Donald, you can see that the tendency to believe anything you're told several times would be a strong survival characteristic. Under primitive conditions, anything you're told repeatedly by your elders is quite likely to be true. Where to find edible plants, what parts of them are poisonous, and so on. A young human being who adopted an attitude of skepticism in these matters would probably have a short life span. Well, as a by-product this tendency would carry with it the tendency to believe all kinds of other things, many of them not true at all, but in terms of individual survival it doesn't matter whether those things are true or not.

"Now in terms of group survival, it turns out that it does matter a great deal: not what the group believes, especially, but whether it has a strong common belief, because that unites it against other groups and makes it cohere both socially and genetically. And for these purposes, we see that it's a positive advantage to believe in something completely absurd. All these things are isolating mechanisms, and for that you don't want something reasonable. Nobody is going to die for the proposition that water runs downhill."

"So you think human beings have a tendency to believe things because they're absurd?"

"Obviously so, or we wouldn't all be rushing to pack ourselves into a cube a mile on a side."

''I'm Diane Oliver. "

"And I'm Robert Bellevue, and this is Your Bright Morning. At the top of the news, recent allegations about Ed Stone have shocked the nation and the world. Are these allegations true? We don't know, but a picture is emerging of a confused young man who believed that overpopulation and pollution were going to cause the end of the world, and who was so distressed that he became a victim of amnesia, left his family, and believed that he had been kidnapped by aliens. To bolster this story, he acquired nineteen-thirties clothing from a costumer and various other articles, including an old magazine. Steven Alswanger, an attorney for Mrs. Howard Filer, said this morning, 'We have located the dealer who sold him the magazine. He even went to the extent of having gold inlays put in two of his teeth. We haven't found the dentist who did that, but we're still looking, and eventually he will come forward .' "

"Robert, how do you account for the fact that so many people believed his story?"

"Well, Diane, it's an astounding instance of human gullibility, but it's happened before. Hitler was able to persuade millions of Germans to support him in a catastrophic war against his neighbors in Europe. Christ and Mohammed created fanatical movements that swept the world. We don't know why these things happen, but maybe we ought to know. "

The legal team was meeting with their client in Meredith's office. "Ed, did you ever have a beard?"

"Yeah, when I was on the spaceship. I shaved it off as soon as I could. It itched."

"How long was the beard?"

Stone held up one finger crosswise under his chin. "About like this."

"So, you must have been on the spaceship about a month?"

"Maybe so."

"And you grew a beard because you didn't have anything to shave with?"

"Right. They gave all that stuff back when I left."

"Ed, what did you eat while you were on the spaceship?"

"There was some kind of like gelatin hanging from the ceiling. You could pull off a chunk and eat it. It was sweet."

"What about water?"

"It was dripping down one wall of the room I was in. Lukewarm.''

"And toilet facilities?"

"The basin where the water went down. It wasn't like the Ritz."

"And you were all alone on the spaceship, except for the aliens?"

"I didn't say that. There were all kinds of animals-they showed me pictures. People, too, but they were in suspended animation. What's the point of all this?"

"Ed, we've got to deal with this story. Let me ask you bluntly, is it possible that you imagined the whole thing?"

"Sure it is. How would I know?"

"Is it possible that you're Howard Filer?"

"Anything is possible. Jesus Christ!"

The three A-team whores were sitting around a table in a bar on Fiftieth Street. "One of the things we may have to explain," said Dr. Fine, "is just this: if Stone is who he claims to be, and he was kidnapped by aliens and so on, and they put something in his ring that makes people believe what he tells them, what could that substance be?" "It's possible, it seems to me," Dr. Savage re plied, "that there are naturally occurring neurochemicals in human beings that do exactly the same thing-mediate love and belief, so that children tend to grow up believing whatever their parents believe. These would have to be stable substances that could be passed from parent to child by contact-mucosal contact especially. That would account at least in part for the stability of religious and political beliefs, and of course things like xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, and racism."

"Aren't you multiplying entities?" asked Dr. Coleman.

"No, because we're trying to account for a real phenomenon. The effects would be masked by things we already know about-indoctrination, peer pressure, and so on-but these substances, if they exist, would account for a good many rather puzzling things. Ninety-nine point something percent of Mormons who grow up in Mormon communities and go to Mormon colleges remain Mormons. The apostasy rate for Catholics is higher, because they often go to secular colleges, and the rate for Protestants is higher still."

"Because they're exposed to other ideas," said Dr. Fine.

"Yes, and other neurochemicals, especially when they marry, or have intimate relationships with, other students. By the way, these substances could also explain sexual bonding in adults. When we talk about 'making love,' it isn't just a euphemism, it's literal. That's how you really make love." There were murmurs of assent, puffs of pipe smoke.

"And we know these effects are long-lasting, because bonding survives long separations. But it does wear off eventually. The substances are stable, but they're excreted slowly and fall below a threshold value."

"So the whole thing really could be, uh, true."

"Oh, yes, I think so, definitely, yes."

"Mrs. Vernon, thank you for seeing me. How are you today?"

"I'm hurting with my arthritis. Who did you say you are again?"

"I'm from a national research agency. We'd like to ascertain some facts about your parents. Was your father named Edwin L. Stone?"

"My mother called him Ed."

"Ed Stone?"

"Yes, Ed Stone."

"Do you have any family photos, Mrs. Vernon? Do you have a picture of your father?"

"Oh, no. We left him when I was a child."

"Do you know what happened to your father after that?"

"No. We never talked about him."

"Did you have any sisters or brothers?"

"One brother. He died in nineteen eighty-eight."

"What was his name, Mrs. Vernon?"

"Larry. Lawrence."

"Was he married? Did he have any children?"

"He was married twice. The first one, they had three children. His second wife didn't want any."

"Do you remember the names of the children?"

"Well, yes. The oldest was Elsie, she married a mining engineer and went to New Zealand. Then there was Robert, I think he went into real estate. And the youngest was Stephanie, but she died when she was twenty. "

"Where did Robert Stone live, do you know?"

"California. Los Angeles."

"Stone Harris Realty, good morning."

"Mr. Robert Stone, please."

"May I ask who's calling?"

Meredith covered the phone for a moment. "Bingo," he said.

One of Meredith's bright young men flew to Los Angeles and came back with a photo of Robert Stone's grandfather: it showed a young man standing in bright sunlight beside what looked like a Model T Ford. His hat shaded his eyes.

Meredith said, "All this proves is that there was an Ed Stone who lived in Harrisburg at the right time. Neither Mrs. Vernon nor Robert Stone have any recollection that the full name was Edwin L. We can depose Robert and get him to say, yes, to the best of his knowledge and belief this is a photograph of his grandfather Ed Stone, and we'll do that. And we can get a whore to analyze the photo and say, based on bone structure and so on, this is a picture of Ed. But the prosecution can get a whore to say just the opposite. The prosecution could argue, and undoubtedly will argue, that even if we can prove there was an Edwin L. Stone who was born in Altoona and lived in Harrisburg, and so on, that doesn't prove Ed is not an impostor. If he planned this carefully, he could have gone to those places and looked up everything he needed to know. "

"Taken the place of a real Edwin L. Stone?"

"Who was married and had two children, and so on. You can get all that stuff out of newspapers, for Christ's sake. He wouldn't even have to go anywhere, he could use computer databases."

"So you're saying we can't prove he didn't do that."

"No, we can't, and the prosecution can't prove he did, either, but if they produce enough witnesses who claim to have known Ed as Filer, they can sway a jury, and that's what they're counting on."

"What would you say our chances are?"

"Fifty-fifty."