He was not eager to destone even one of them, however. Bringing Panthea Snick to life would probably cause enough trouble. Any more unauthorized destoning was going to upset Locks twice as much. So be it. That was too bad. Let him burn. He, Duncan, was asbestos. If he was not, he would certainly find out.
“Which one seemed to be in charge?” Duncan said.
Snick indicated the woman, a tall blonde with a rather hard face.
“Then she might know more.”
Duncan got a robot into operation. A few minutes later, the woman stepped out of the cylinder. Snick seized her from behind, and Duncan sprayed truth mist in her face. She struggled to free herself and to hold her breath while doing so. Duncan helped Snick restrain her until the woman slumped, her head hanging forward. After they had placed her on a table, Duncan swiftly interrogated her. She readily answered in that soft and slurred voice, seldom emotion-charged, that those under the influence used. Detective-Captain Sandra Johns Bu, however, could only report that her superior, Detective-Major Theodore Elizabeth Scarlatti, had ordered her to question Snick about what she knew of the LF, or “longevity factor.” Scarlatti did not explain what that phrase meant. Nevertheless, Bu had paid heavily for her slip. Shortly after Bu had been commanded to leave the room, she was taken in for questioning. Wholly bewildered, frightened yet angry because she knew she was innocent, she had denied knowing anything of the LF. Then truth mist had been administered to her. She had awakened suddenly in the cylinder, where she had been seized by Snick and Duncan.
“And so back she goes into stone,” Duncan said.
A few minutes later, Bu was standing once more in the silent ranks.
“We don’t know any more than we did before,” Duncan said.
“Not quite true,” Snick said. “We know that you know or at least knew something about prolonging life. You were not a scientist in any of your seven personae. Therefore, you must have been given that knowledge. Perhaps you shared it with the other members of your organization. Whatever…the government has not made public the existence of your group or of the LF. It’s desperate to keep it secret. It’s also desperate to get hold of you, and that must be because you know what the government doesn’t want the public to know.”
“I already figured that out,” Duncan said. “Question. How do I find out what I know, yet don’t know?”
12
Duncan had been right. Ragnar Locks was angry.
“You had no right to bring her into the band! Especially when you’re just about to—”
He stopped because Snick was within ear range. He did not want her to know that Duncan would be going under another identity to Los Angeles.
“She was my only means to find out why the government wants me so badly,” Duncan said. “That reason is very important. Anyway, she’s no danger. She can’t go to the organics and tell them about us. She wouldn’t, anyway. She hates them now.”
“It was for nothing,” Locks said. “You still don’t have any idea of why they want you.”
“I have a clue, and that’s more than I had. Look. She’s very well trained, a highly competent organic who knows the ins and outs of her field. I think she ought to be given a new ID, too. She could go to Los Angeles with me.”
Locks’ face got even redder, but he choked back his retort. He threw his hands up and walked away. Duncan winked at Snick. She was pale but managed to smile slightly. Shortly thereafter, Locks returned, much calmer.
“I’ll be glad to get rid of both of you,” he said. “OK. If it can be done, she can go with you.”
Two obdays later, it was done. On Tuesday morning, at eight o’clock, Duncan, Snick, and Cabtab were in the town of New Ark, New Jersey. This was near the old city of Newark, which had long ago disappeared, overwhelmed and buried by accumulating soil and heavy forest. Even those buildings that had survived the siege and the burning and had been preserved as monuments had in two thousand obyears been covered over. A plaque on the station wall commemorated it as the site of the prison camp for New York and New Jersey criminals after Wang Shen’s forces had conquered the eastern United States of America. It was near here that twenty-three thousand criminals, including all known Mafia, had been executed. This had happened, as the plaque noted, before the beginning of the New Era and its stoning techniques. Capital punishment had long ago been abolished. In theory, anyway, Cabtab pointed out to his colleagues.
“Wang Shen can’t be accused of racial or national discrimination. All felons convicted of murder, extortion, rape, and drug dealing were executed throughout the world. The Great Clean Sweep, Wang Shen called it. However…ho! ho! ho!…there were just as many criminals in the next generation. That, of course, was just the start of the New Era. In the third generation, government propaganda, you can call it conditioning, if you wish, had reduced the number of detected criminals by three-quarters. Then the number of detected criminals rose during the following generation because the invention of truth mist made it impossible for a criminal to lie. After that, well, no society that existed previously had been so crime-free. Not that there aren’t still some. Take us, for example. Ho! ho! ho!”
Duncan looked around uneasily. Cabtab’s loud laughter and his three chins and huge belly were attracting attention. Nobody was staring at them; the citizens were too polite to do that. Nevertheless, they were glancing sidewise at Cabtab and moving away. Though the station was crowded, there was an unoccupied area ten feet in diameter around the three.
“I think,” Duncan said, “we should quiet down.”
“What?” Cabtab said. He looked around. “Oh, yes, I see.”
“It would help if you started to diet, too,” Snick said.
“I’ve done more than enough by getting rid of my religious artifacts,” Cabtab said softly, his face red. “That was a tremendous sacrifice, though no one else seems to appreciate that.”
“You’re no longer a preacher,” Snick said sharply.
“Not according to my ID. But if you take the preacher from the church, you can’t remove the church from the preacher. Wherever I am, there is my church.”
“Try to keep quiet about it, then,” Snick said.
Cabtab prodded her in the ribs with a huge horny thumb, and he laughed loudly. Snick winced.
“Now, now, let’s not get too organic. You’re no longer invested with great authority. I don’t have to jump at your command.”
“I think,” Duncan said in a low voice, “that we should quit any such talk altogether. Remember, we’re not who we were. Act accordingly.”
“Quite right,” Cabtab rumbled. “I’ll strive to be a good little boy from now on.”
They were standing near the north entrance of the building. It was a towering structure that looked like a cross between a pagoda and a Gothic temple. Its white walls, exterior and interior, were inlaid with scarlet twelve-sided alto-reliefs bearing bright-green globes. The four main entrances were two-story-high arches, open at the moment because the three sectional doors had been withdrawn into wall recesses. The main room had a domed ceiling two stories high. There were about a hundred people beneath the ceiling, sitting on benches, walking around, or standing in groups. The inevitable giant TV screens were placed here and there on the walls so that the occupants could keep up with Tuesday’s news, the train schedule, or the current hi-pop shows.
The three went to a bench and sat down. Shortly thereafter, another area was cleared around them. Duncan bit his lip. Cabtab was not, just now, anyway, an asset to him and Snick. However, he was not the only unsocially obese person there. And being fat was not a crime, though the attitude of most people and of the government was that it bordered on illegality. Certainly, the obese were often hounded by agents of the Bureau of Fitness and Standards. TO LOSE IS TO GAIN was the official slogan. Lose fat and gain health, respect, and a longer life was what the state meant. FOR THE GREATER GOOD OF THE PEOPLE BECOME LESSER.
Cabtab’s new ID was that of Jeremiah Scanderbeg Ward, and the fake data
bank file was spotted with frequent reprimands and small fines by the Bureau of Fitness and Standards. Which must have caused whomever had made up the file a lot of work, Duncan thought.
Snick’s new ID was Jenny Ko Chandler. Duncan’s had for some reason been changed from David Ember Grim to Andrew Vishnu Beewolf. He would have preferred Smith or Wang or even Grim, but the unknown data banker who had put the ID into the files must have had a compelling reason to choose Beewolf.
“Here comes the train,” Cabtab-Ward said.
It was actually fifty miles away, as indicated by a wall screen. The TV monitors along the route, however, showed the bullet-shaped cars rocketing by. Estimated time of arrival at New Ark: 2.5 minutes. The porters were already moving out large robot-carriers, the platforms of which were jammed with stoned people. These were passengers who preferred to ride safely, invulnerable to the most terrible crashes. Also free of the boredom, anxiety, and inconvenience of travel. On the other hand, they would not enjoy the sights of the countryside or of the unfamiliar cities the train would go through.
The wall screens announced that boarding time would be in ten minutes. The crowd picked up their travel cases and moved out into the open area between the station and the “tracks.” Duncan stood behind the safety railing near them. The tracks were actually a narrow highway of synthetic metal on the ground and enormous vertical hoops of metal placed at forty-foot intervals above the road. Presently, the train, now moving slowly, appeared around a hill. It took some time for the end of the mile-long series of fifty-foot-long cars to show. The lead car, its radar antennae rotating, floated five feet above the shiny gray roadway. When the train stopped, the end car was four thousand feet from the station. Then the chain of vehicles sank slowly to the roadbed.
Whistles blew. Porters’ voices rose hoarsely. The screens on poles near the safety railing flashed instructions. Duncan and his companions got into line. The doors of their car slid open, and conductors stepped out. They wore Lincoln-green uniforms, tunics that came halfway down to the thighs and caps that had not changed for two thousand obyears. A wide scarlet patch on their breasts bore two crossed steam-locomotive insignias. Just above the visors of their caps was a gold-colored metal circle bearing a green globe.
The conductor at Duncan’s entrance, a tall dark woman with a big motherly bosom and a wicked stepmother’s face, spoke loudly. “Step right up! Move it! We have a schedule to meet! No farting around!”
Duncan slipped his ID card into the slot and his right thumb into a hole. The conductor looked at the screen showing vital data and his destination. It flashed a short code indicating that the data was correct and the thumbprint was Andrew Vishnu Beewolf’s. Three short whistles issued from the machine; its screen flashed: ID CERT.
Duncan removed his card and hurried into the car. The information had been transmitted from the scanner to various data banks all over the world, checked with the records, and found not wanting. Snick and Cabtab also passed the test. The first of many to come, Duncan thought, as he sat down by a window. Panthea was on his left, Cabtab across from him. The fourth passenger was a middle-aged man, only six feet tall, thin, large-eyed, and long-faced. He wore a very fashionable hat, sporting two yellow antennae. His rainbow-colored tunic was also current, knee-length and with a scoop that went almost to his navel. He wore a neck-chain from which depended a large metal image of an ant. Before the train started to move, he introduced himself in a high-pitched voice.
“Doctor Herman Trophallaxis Carebara, late of the University of Queens. Immigrant to the State of Los Angeles, Lower California Division. And you, if you please?”
Duncan introduced himself and the others. Carebara church-steepled his hands together before his chest and bowed slightly each time Duncan said the names. Snick replied in kind. The two men just waved a hand to indicate that they acknowledged the introduction. A subtle expression passed across Carebara’s face. Duncan interpreted it as dislike of their informality.
“I am a professor of entomology, specialty formicology,” Carebara said. “And you, if you please?”
“Entomology? Formicology?” Cabtab said.
“The study of insects. My specialty is the study of those insects known to the layperson as ants.”
“I’m of theologian genus, of the street preacher species,” Cabtab said, grinning. “My mundane professions are garbage collector, waiter, and bartender. My female sister-in-spirit is a medical technologist, and my brother-in-spirit is a data banker. We are all New-Jersey born and have never been out of this state.”
“Very interesting,” Carebara said.
By then, the doors had been shut, the PA had told the passengers that the train was leaving on schedule, which they already knew, and a conductor was moving his wheeled machine down the aisle. He was requiring the passengers to give him their ID cards so he could check them out again in his machine. That, Duncan thought, was unnecessary, redundant, and time-wasting, not to mention annoying. But the regulations demanded it, and there might be a very very slight chance that someone unauthorized had slipped onto the car.
He glanced out the window. The train was now five feet above the roadbed and accelerating swiftly. The giant rings were flashing by, and the meadows, farms, and forest were whipping past. He wished that the car were not moving so fast. He liked to see the countryside and the little towns in detail. Such hurry was really not necessary. The train would have to stop when it came near the border of the Central Standard Time Zone. Why couldn’t it just amble along and push ahead, as it were, the next time zone?
“My main studies have been in the communication codes of ants,” Carebara was saying. “That is, in the forms of recognition and exchange of information, ocular, physical, and chemical. Signs and scents. My special specialty, if I may call it that, is mimetism. That is, those nonants, those insects who pass themselves off as ants. Beetles that look like ants, behave like ants, and live off of ants in their very midst.” He smiled and said, “Beetles that are freeloaders, bums, spongers, parasites. They give nothing, and they take all they can get.”
Cabtab rolled his eyes and drummed his fingers on the armrest. Snick sighed. Duncan, however, was intrigued. He said, “Just how do they do that?”
Carebara smiled, delighted that he had at least a mono-audience.
“The main form of communication in an ant colony is by odor. The members give off pheromones, scents that identify them as belonging to~ the colony. The parasites have evolved through millions of years of evolution, have adapted their bodies to give off pheromones similar enough to the ants’ to fool their hosts. They beg food from the ants by drumming on the hosts’ bodies with their antennae and stroking the mouths of the ants with their legs. Whatever it takes to get the ant to disgorge its food. The bums also eat their hosts’ larvae and eggs. Some do, anyway.”
He settled back, closed his eyes for a moment, and smiled. He was pleased with himself. When he opened his eyes, he said, “Essentially, the parasites have evolved to the point where they have broken the ants’ codes. The sensory and olfactory codes that ants use to do work, defend themselves, or cooperate in attacking other ants or intruders. The beetles, fifth columners, in a sense, infiltrate, settle down among their hosts and live high off the hog, as it were.
“In this, they differ from their human counterparts, the revolutionaries, the subversives, the malcontents, who want to overthrow the government so that they can rule. No insect wants to overthrow its government. No ant ever rebelled. And the beetles…they don’t care about changing the system in the colony. Why should they? They, if you’ll excuse the colloquialism, have it made.”
Cabtab, who had gotten interested in spite of himself, looked at Duncan and winked. “Perhaps there’s a lesson for us in our learned friend’s discourse,” he said.
Duncan ignored him and spoke to Carebara.
“It’s basically a matter of breaking the code?”
Carebara nodded and said, “Yes. Formicologists now know exactly how
the body chemistry of the mimetic beetles matches that of the hosts. We formicologists have been working with biochemists for a long time on that subject. You may have seen TV documentaries or read tapes about our work in making synthetic species, most of which, unfortunately, are short-lived, even for those of the entomological persuasion. Yes?”
Snick and Duncan nodded.
“Two out of three isn’t bad. Well, my colleagues at the University of Lower California, Los Angeles, have done splendid work on both natural and synthetic mimetic beetle parasites. They invited me to come to L.A. to collaborate in their research. Since emigration also brings with it more credits, better housing, more perks, as you well know, no doubt they are your main reason in emigrating, otherwise, why tear up your roots? Ah, as I was saying, for these reasons I left Queens for the first time in my life.”
“Yes, we wanted a somewhat better life, too,” Duncan said. “Also, our life has always been somewhat rural. We would like to try metropolitan living. Anyway, these synthetic mimetics…”
“Fire ants, as you laypersons call them, have recently become a menace again. My work, mine and my colleagues’, will be to make mimetic beetles that will transcend the aims, if I may use that word, of the natural parasites. They will be genetically programed to eat the eggs and larvae of their hosts. But not openly so that their hosts become alarmed and eat them. Thus, we hope to wipe out or at least greatly reduce the numbers of the fire ants. However, the project may take a long time. Its long-range implications are that entomologists, in conjunction with biochemists, may be able to make many species that can control all those insects that are harmful to humankind. They may work out far better than the laboratory-made mutants we’ve used so far.”
The conductor interrupted him, and after he was gone, the three outlaws shunted the conversation onto another subject. When Carebara, after futile efforts to rechannel it back to his ants, left for the rest room, Duncan spoke softly so that the neighbors couldn’t overhear.