The Eyes of Heisenberg

11.

In the control center, their red Survey Globe, the Tuyere occupied the thrones on the pivoting triangle, reviewing data and reviewing data—correlating, deducing, commanding. The 120-degree scan of curved wall available to each of them flashed with data in numerous modes—pictorially in the spying screens, as probability function in mathematical read-outs, as depth-module decision analogues, as superior/inferior unit apportionments pictured in free-flowing pyramids, as visual reports reduced to cubed grids of binaries according to relative values, as motivational curves weighted for action/reaction and presented in flowing green lines…

In the upper quadrants, scanner eyes glittered to show how many of the Optimen were sitting in on the globe’s activity—over a thousand this morning.

Calapine worried the prescription ring on her left thumb, felt the abortive hum of power in it as she twisted and slid it along her skin. She was restless, full of demands for which she could find no names. The duties of the globe were becoming repellent, her companions hateful. In here, time settled into more of a continuous blur without days or nights. Every companion she had ever known grew to be the same companion, merged, endlessly merged.

“Once more have I studied the protein synthesis tape on the Durant embryo,” Nourse said. He glanced at Calapine in the reflector beside his head, drummed the arm of his throne with fingers that moved back and forth, back and forth on the carved plasmeld.

“Something we’ve missed, something we’ve missed,” Calapine mocked. She looked at Schruille, caught him rubbing his hands along his robe at his thighs, a motion that seemed filled with stark betrayal of nervousness.

“Now it happens I’ve discovered the thing we missed,” Nourse said.

A movement of Schruille’s head caught Nourse’s attention. He turned. For a moment, they stared at each other in the prisms. Nourse found it interesting that Schruille betrayed a tiny skin blemish beside his nose.

Odd, Nourse thought. How could one of us have a blemish such as that? Surely there could be no enzymic imbalance.

“Well, what is it?” Schruille demanded.

“You’ve a blemish beside your nose,” Nourse said.

Schruille stared at him.

“You deduce this from the embryo’s tape?” Calapine asked.

“Eh? Oh… no, of course not.”

“Then what is it you’ve discovered?”

“Yes. Well… it seems rather obvious now that the operation Potter performed may be repeatable—given that general type of embryo and proper administration of sperm protamine.”

Schruille shuddered.

“Have you deduced the course of the operation?” Calapine asked.

“Not precisely, but in outline, yes.”

“Potter could repeat it?” she asked.

“Perhaps even Svengaard.”

“Guard and preserve us,” Calapine muttered. It was a ritual formula whose words seldom caught an Optiman’s conscious attention, but she heard herself this time and the word “preserve” stood out as though outlined in fire.

She whirled away.

“Where is Max?” Schruille asked.

The whine in Schruille’s voice brought a sneer to Nourse’s lips.

“Max is working,” Nourse said. “He is busy.”

Schruille looked up at the watching scanners, thinking of all their fellows behind those lensed eyes—the Actionists seeing events as a new demand upon their talents, not realizing what violence might be unleashed here; the Emotionals, fearful and complaining, rendered almost ineffective by guilt feelings; the Cynics, interested by the new game (most of the watchers, Schruille felt, were Cynics); the Hedonists, angered by the current sense of urgent emergency, worried because such matters interfered with their enjoyments; and the Effetes, looking in all this for something new at which to sneer.

Will we now develop a new party? Schruille asked himself. Will we now have the Brutals, all sensitivity immured by the needs of self-preservation? Nourse and Calapine haven’t faced this as yet.

Again, he shuddered.

“Max calls,” Calapine said. “I have him in my transient screen.”

Schruille and Nourse flicked their channel duplicators, looked down at Allgood’s swarthy, solid, muscular figure in the transient screen.

“I report,” Allgood said.

Calapine watched the Security chiefs face. He appeared oddly distracted, fearful.

“What of Potter?” Nourse asked.

Allgood blinked.

“Why does he delay his answer?” Schruille asked.

“It’s because he worships us,” Calapine said.

“Worship is a product of fear,” Schruille said. “Perhaps there’s something he wishes to show us, a projection or an evidential sub-datum. Is that it, Max?”

Allgood stared out of the screen, looking from one to the other. They’d gotten tied up in that lost-time sense again, the endless word play and disregard for time in the quest for data, data, data—that side effect of endless life, the supra-involvement in trivia. This time, he hoped it would go on without end.

“Where is Potter?” Nourse demanded.

Allgood swallowed. “Potter has… temporarily eluded us.” He knew better than to lie or evade now.

“Eluded?” Schruille asked.

“How?” Nourse asked.

“There was… violence,” Allgood said.

“Show us this violence,” Schruille said.

“No,” Calapine said. “I will take Max’s word for it.”

“Do you doubt Max?” Nourse asked.

“No doubts,” Schruille said. “But I will see this violence.”

“How can you?” Calapine asked.

“Leave if you wish,” Schruille said. He measured out his words: “I… will… see… this… violence.” He looked at Allgood. “Max?”

Allgood swallowed. This was a development he had not anticipated.

“It happened,” Nourse said. “We know that, Schruille.”

“Of course it happened,” Schruille said. “I saw the mark where it was edited out of our channels. Violence. Now, I wish to bypass the safety valve which protects our sensitivities.” He snorted. “Sensitivities!”

Nourse stared at him, noting that all traces of a whine had gone from Schruille’s voice.

Schruille looked up at the scanners, saw that many were winking off. He was disgusting even the Cynics, no doubt. A few remained, though.

Will they stay through to the end? he wondered.

“Show the violence, Max,” Schruille ordered.

Allgood shrugged.

Nourse swiveled his throne around, putting his back to the screen. Calapine put her hands over her eyes.

“As you command,” Allgood said. His face vanished from the screen, was replaced by a high view looking down into a tiny square between windowless buildings. Two tiny figures walked around a fountain in the square. They stopped and a close-up showed the faces—Potter and an unknown, a strange-looking man with frighteningly cold eyes.

Again, the long view—two other men emerging from an alley carrying paper-wrapped packages. Behind them trooped a file of children with adult monitor in teacher’s uniform.

Abruptly, Potter was lurching, pushing through the children. His companion was running the other way around the fountain.

Schruille risked a glance at Calapine, caught her peeking between her fingers.

A shrill, piercing cry from the screen, brought his attention jerking back.

Potter’s companion had become a thing of horror, clothing fallen away, a milky bulb arising from his chest to flare with brilliant light.

The screen went blank, came alive again to a view from a slightly different angle.

A quick glance showed that Calapine had dropped all pretense of hiding her eyes, was staring at the screen. Nourse, too, watched through his shoulder prism.

Another blaze of light leaped from the figure in the screen. Again the scene went blank.

“It’s a Cyborg,” Schruille said. “Know that as you watch.”

Again, the scene came alive from a different angle and this time from very high. The action in the plasmeld canyon was reduced to a movement of midges, but there was no difficulty in finding the center of violence. Lancets of blazing light leaped upward from a lurching figure in the square. Aircars exploded and fell from the sky in pieces.

One Security vehicle plummeted in behind the Cyborg. A pulsing beam of coherent light emerged from it to cut a smoking furrow down the side of a building. The Cyborg whirled, lifted a hand from which a blinding blue finger seemed to extend into infinity. The finger met the diving car, split it in half. One half hit a building, ricocheted and smashed into the Cyborg.

A ball of yellow brilliance took shape in the square. In a second, a reverberating explosion shook the scene.

Schruille looked up to find the circle of watching scanners complete, every lensed eye blazing red.

Calapine cleared her throat. “Potter went into that building on the right.”

“Is that all you can say?” Schruille asked.

Nourse swiveled his throne, glared at Schruille.

“Was it not interesting?” Schruille asked.

“Interesting?” Nourse demanded.

“It is called warfare,” Schruille said.

Allgood’s face reappeared on the screen, looking up at them with a veiled intensity.

He’s naturally curious at our reaction, Schruille thought.

“Do you know of our weapons, Max?” Schruille asked.

“This talk of weapons and violence disgusts me,” Nourse said. “What is the good of this?”

“Why do we have weapons if they were not intended for use?” Schruille asked. “Do you know the answer, Max?”

“I know of your weapons,” Allgood said. “They are the ultimate safeguard for your persons.”

“Of course we have weapons!” Nourse shouted. “But why must we -”

“Nourse, you demean yourself,” Calapine said.

Nourse pushed himself back in his throne, hands gripping the arms. “Demean myself!”

“Let us review this new development,” Schruille said. “Cyborgs we knew existed. They have eluded us consistently. Thus, they control computer editing channels and have sympathy among the Folk. Thus, we see, they have an Action Arm which can sacrifice… I say sacrifice a member for the good of the whole.”

Nourse stared at him, wide-eyed, drinking the words.

“And we,” Schruille said, “we had forgotten how to be thoroughly brutal.”

“Faaah!” Nourse barked.

“If you injure a man with a weapon,” Schruille said, “which is the responsible party—the weapon or the one who wields it?”

“Explain yourself,” Calapine whispered.

Schruille pointed to Allgood in the screen. “There is our weapon. We’ve wielded it times without number until it learned to wield itself. We’ve not forgotten how to be brutal, we’ve merely forgotten that we are brutal.”

“What rot!” Nourse said.

“Look,” Schruille said. He pointed up to the watching scanners, every one of them alive. “There’s my evidence,” Schruille said. “When have so many watched in the globe?”

A few of the lights began to wink out, but came back as the channels were taken over by other watchers.

Allgood watching from the screen felt the thrill of complete fascination. A tight sensation in his chest prevented deep breaths, but he ignored it. The Optimen facing violence! After a lifetime playing with euphemisms, Allgood found the thought of this almost unacceptable. It had been so swift. But then these were the live-forevers, the people who could not fail. He wondered then at the thoughts which raced through their minds.

Schruille, the usually silent and watchful, looked down at Allgood and said, “Who else has eluded us, Max?”

Allgood found himself unable to speak.

“The Durants are missing,” Schruille said. “Svengaard has not been found. Who else?”

“No one, Schruille. No one.”

“We want them captured,” Schruille said.

“Of course, Schruille.”

“Alive,” Calapine said.

“Alive, Calapine?” Allgood asked.

“If it’s possible,” Schruille said.

Allgood nodded. “I obey, Schruille.”

“You may get back to your work now,” Schruille said.

The screen went blank.

Schruille busied himself with the controls in the arm of his throne.

“What’re you doing?” Nourse demanded and he heard the petulance in his own voice, despising it.

“I remove the censors which excluded violence from our eyes except as a remote datum,” Schruille said. “It is time we observed the reality of our land.”

Nourse sighed. “If you feel it’s necessary.”

“I know it’s necessary.”

“Most interesting,” Calapine said.

Nourse looked at her. “What do you find interesting in this obscenity?”

“This exhilaration I feel,” she said. “It’s most interesting.”

Nourse whirled away from her, glared at Schruille. He could see now that there definitely was a skin blemish on Schruille’s face—beside his nose.