The Eyes of Heisenberg

14.

Only Nourse of the Tuyere occupied a throne in the Survey Globe, his attention on the rays, the winking lights and gauges, the cascading luminescences that reported affairs of the Folk. A telltale told him it was night outside in this hemisphere—darkness that spread across the land from Seatac to the megalopolis of N’Scotia. He saw the physical darkness as a sign of frightening events to come and wished Schruille and Calapine would return.

The visual-report screen came alight. Nourse turned to face it as Allgood’s features appeared there. The Security boss bowed to Nourse.

“What is it?” Nourse asked.

“Seatac Checkpoint East reports a van with an odd load of containers has just gone through, Nourse. Its turbines carried masking mutes which we deciphered. The mutes concealed sounds of breathing—five persons hidden in the load. Voices cried out from within as the van pulled away. Acting on your instructions, we put a drop marker onto the van and now have it under observation. What are your orders?”

It begins, Nourse thought. While I’m alone here it begins.

Nourse looked to the instruments covering the checkpoints. Seatac East. The van was a moving green pinpoint on a screen. He read the banked binaries describing the incident, compared them with a total-plan motivational analysis. The probability analogues he derived filled him with a sense of doom.

“The voices have been identified, Nourse,” Allgood said. “The voice prints were -”

“Svengaard and Lizbeth Durant,” Nourse said.

“Where she is, her husband cannot be far away,” Allgood said.

Allgood’s logical little announcements began to annoy Nourse. He contained the emotion while noting the man had overlooked the use of the Optiman’s name-in-address. It was a small sign, but significant, especially when Allgood appeared not to notice his own lapse.

“Which leaves us two unidentified,” Nourse said.

“We can make an educated guess… Nourse.”

Nourse glanced at his probability analogues, said, “Two of our wayward pharmacists.”

“One may be Potter, Nourse.”

Nourse shook his head. “Potter remains in Seatac.”

“They may have a portable vat, Nourse, and that embryo with them,” Allgood said, “but we failed to detect appropriate machinery.”

“You would not hear the machinery being used,” Nourse said. “Or, hearing it, you would not identify it.”

Nourse looked up to the banks of scanners—every one of them alive—showing the Optimen observing their Survey Globe. Night or day, the watching channels were jammed. They know what I mean, he thought. Are they disgusted, or is this just another interesting aspect of violence?

As could have been predicted, Allgood said, “I fail to understand Nourse’s meaning.”

“No need,” Nourse said. He looked at the face in the screen. So young it appeared, but Nourse had begun to notice a thing: There was much youngness in Central, but no youth. Even the Sterrie servants betrayed this fact to the unveiled eye. He felt himself to be like the Sterrie Folk suddenly, watching each other for evidence of aging, hoping by comparison that their own appearance prospered.

“What are Nourse’s instructions?” Allgood asked.

“Svengaard’s outcry indicates he’s a prisoner,” Nourse said. “But we must not overlook the possibility this is an elaborate ruse.” He spoke in a resigned, tired voice.

“Shall we destroy the van, Nourse?”

“Destroy…” Nourse shuddered. “No, not yet. Keep it under surveillance. Put out a general alert. We must discover where they’re headed. Every contact they make must be noted and marked down for attention.”

“If they elude us, Nourse, it could -”

“You’ve flagtapped the appropriate enzyme prescriptions?”

“Yes, Nourse.”

“Then they cannot run far… or long.”

“As you say, Nourse.”

“You may go,” Nourse said.

He watched the screen long after it had turned blank. Destroy the van? That would be an ending. He felt then that he did not want this game to end—ever. A curious feeling of elation crept through him.

The globe’s entrance segment swung open below him. Calapine entered followed by Schruille. They rode the climbing beam to their seats on the triangular dais. Neither spoke. They appeared withdrawn, oddly calm. Nourse thought of a controlled storm as he looked at them—the lightning and the thunder contained, that it might not harm their fellows.

“Is it not time?” Calapine asked.

A sigh escaped Nourse.

Schruille activated the sensor contact with the scanners in the mountains. There was moonlight suddenly in the receiving screens, the sounds of nightbirds, a rustling of dry leaves. Far off across moon-frosted hills lay lines and patches of lights tracing the coast and harbors of the megalopolis and the multi-level skyway networks.

Calapine stared at the scene, thinking of jewels and casual baubles, the playthings of idleness. She’d not had the inclination in several centuries to indulge in such toys. Why should I think of them now? she wondered. These are not toys, these lights.

Nourse examined the binary pyramids, the action analogues showing the course of Folk activity within the megalopolis.

“All is normal… and in readiness,” he said.

“Normal!” Schruille said,

“Which of us?” Calapine whispered.

“I have seen the necessity longest,” Schruille said. “I will do it.” He rolled a looping ring in the arm of his throne and as he moved it was appalled by the simplicity of the action. This ring and the powers it controlled had been at hand for eons, an insensitive linkage of machinery. All it took was a simple turning motion, a hand and the will behind the hand.

Calapine watched the scene in her screens—moonlight on hills, the megalopolis beyond, an animated toy subject to her whims. The last cadre of special personnel had departed, she knew. Irreplaceable objects that might be damaged had been removed. All was ready and doomed.

Winking flares began to appear through the necklaces of light—golden yellow flares. The Tuyere’s screens blurred as sonics vibrated the distant scanners. Lights began going out. Across the entire region, the lights went out—in groups and one by one. A low green fog rolled across the scene, filling in the valleys, overrunning the hills.

Presently, no lights were visible. Only the green fog remained. It continued to creep out beneath the impersonal moon, moving out and across and through until it remained and nothing more.

Schruille watched the stacked numerical analogues, the unemotional reporters which merely counted, submitted deductions of sortings, remainders… zeroes. Nothing showed Folk dying in the tubes and warrens, in the streets… at their labors… at their play. Nourse sat weeping.

They are dead, all dead, he thought. Dead. The word felt peculiar in his mind, devoid of personal meaning. It was a term that could be applied to bacteria perhaps… or to weeds. One sterilized an area before bringing in lovely flowers. Why do I weep? He tried to remember if he’d ever wept before. Perhaps there was a time when I wept, he thought But it was so long ago. Ago… ago… ago… time… time… wept… wept. They were words suddenly without meaning. That’s the trouble with endless life, he thought. With too much repetition, everything loses meaning.

Schruille studied the green fog in his screens. A few repairs, and we’ll be able to send in new Folk, he thought. We’ll repopulate with Folk of a safer cut. He wondered then where they’d find the safer Folk. The globe’s analysis boards revealed that the Seatac problem was only one of many such pockets. Symptoms were everywhere the same. He could see the flaw. It centered on the isolation of one generation from another. Lack of traditions and continuity became an obsession with the Folk… because they seemed to communicate no matter what repressions were tried. Folk sayings would crop up to reveal the deep current beneath.

Schruille quoted to himself: “When God first created a dissatisfied man, He put that man outside Central.”

But we created these Folk, Schruille thought. How did we create dissatisfied men?

He turned then and saw that Calapine and Nourse were weeping.

“Why do you weep?” Schruille demanded.

But they remained silent.