Peace on Earth (20 page)

The tunnel kept descending, straight as an arrow, until it was blocked by a curtain of what seemed ordinary straw. I pushed it aside and entered a large room lit with ceiling lights. The scene was one of complete chaos. In the center lay a ruin among large shiny pieces of porcelain; it looked like a supercomputer taken apart by a bomb. Broken curling cables went in and out between these fragments covered with crushed glass and the glittering flakes of integrated chips. Someone had been here before me and wreaked havoc in the heart of the Japanese weapons complex. The strangest part was that the giant computer, several stories high, had been smashed by a force acting from within and probably from the bottom up, since its thick armor-plated walls had buckled and split outward. Some of the sections were like library shelves or cabinets, filled with tight coils of wire, banks of switches, and circuit boards. As if an unbelievable hand had struck up into this colossus and ripped and shattered, but in that case I should have been able to see that hand in the center of the destruction. So I began climbing the rubble, which was as dead and empty as a plundered pyramid, and reached the top and looked down.

Someone lay there as if in a deep and well-earned sleep. At first I thought this was the same robot who had greeted me so warmly during my second reconnaissance, calling me brother only to knock me flat and open me like a can of sardines. I looked at him lying at the bottom of the uneven funnel of debris from the smashed computer. He was man-shaped though larger than a man. There is no hurry to wake him up, I thought. Better to figure out first what happened here. Obviously the Japanese weapons factory had not wished this attack upon itself. I dismissed the hara-kiri possibility as unlikely. Seeing as the borders between sectors were so well guarded, the invasion may have been carried out below them, by burrowing through the rock. In that way the unknown attacker could have made it to the very heart of the computer arsenal to demolish it. I should question this robot who slept so soundly after completing his murderous mission. The prospect didn’t fill me with enthusiasm. In my head I went through all the different forms I could assume, to choose the one that would be safest for our conversation, because this character, awakened, might prove hostile. I couldn’t speak as a cloud but could as a partial cloud, a cloud with a voice box inside it. That seemed the most prudent. To wake the giant I didn’t bother with niceties but pushed a chunk of computer so it would roll down on him, and changed myself as quickly as I could. It hit his head, which made the whole mountain of rubble tremble, and other pieces of electronic debris began to sift down. He got to his feet immediately, stood at attention, and barked:

“Mission a success! Enemy position taken, for the fatherland! Reporting for further instructions!”

“At ease,” I said.

He probably hadn’t expected a command like that but he relaxed, stood with his legs apart, and only then noticed me. Something inside him whirred.

“Hello,” he said. “How are you? You’re a little hazy, my friend. But it’s good that you’ve finally come. Come closer, we’ll have a chat, sing a song, put our heads together. You’ll like it with us. We’re meek, peaceful, we don’t want war, we hate war. Which sector are you from exactly…” he added in a different tone, as if suddenly suspicious, or else he had switched to a more appropriate program. What lay around us was hardly evidence of peaceful activity. He held out his huge, iron right hand, and I saw that each finger was a muzzle.

“You want to shoot a friend?” I asked, wafting gently over the porcelain heap. “Well then go ahead, brother. Shoot, and may it do you good.”

“A Japanese spy!” he barked, blasting at me with all five fingers. Pieces of wall fell but I, still hovering calmly above him, lowered my voice box so it wouldn’t be hit. Thickening the bottom half of the cloud, which was myself, I pushed a chunk of computer the size of a chest of drawers, and it bore down on him, carrying with it an avalanche of rubble.

“An attack!” he yelled. “I’ll draw their fire! For the fatherland!”

“You’re so dedicated,” I said, then turned myself into all cloud, and in the nick of time, because there was a boom and the mountain of debris burst into flame. My self-sacrificing interlocutor stood in blue fire, blazed then blackened but with his last breath managed to shout “For the fatherland!” before he came apart. His arms fell off, his chest split from the heat, revealing for a moment a curiously primitive tied bundle of copper wire, and finally his head went, popped open, and was completely empty, like a walnut shell. But still he stood, a pillar of embers which finally collapsed for good into ashes.

Although I was a gas, I felt the heat beating from the ruins as if from a volcano. I waited a minute, spread along the walls, but no new candidate for conversation stepped from the flames, which leaped upward so fiercely, the ceiling lights, those that were still in one piece, began to crack, and bits of tubing, glass, and wire rained on the rubble and it became darker. The room, geometrical and once neat, a perfect circle, was now like a scene from a witches’ Sabbath in the glow of the blue flame that kept roaring upward, and the air scorched me. Seeing I had no more to learn here, I gathered myself and floated out to the corridor. No doubt the Japanese had other, reserve military centers, so this one might not be that important, but I felt I should return to the surface and tell Control what happened before I continued the reconnaissance. Nothing barred my way or challenged me. I took the tunnel to the armored door, passed through the keyhole and then the grating, and looked with pity at the warning signs I passed, they were so useless. Finally I saw the mouth of the cave glimmer in the distance. Only now did I assume an approximately human shape, having missed it—a new, unprecedented kind of nostalgia, that—and I looked for a boulder where I could sit and eat, because I felt hungry, except I forgot that as a remote I couldn’t put a thing in my mouth. And I really couldn’t leave such an excellent machine undefended just to get a quick bite to eat. So I put that off. I would report to Control first and then break for lunch after I stashed the remote in a safe place.

I called Wivitch but the only answer was dead silence. I checked with the Geiger counter to see if maybe there was ionized gas here too. Or possibly the short waves couldn’t get out of this narrow ravine. So with a sigh I turned back into a cloud and flew high into the black sky and like a bird again called Earth. Of course I couldn’t be a bird, with no air there’s nothing to support wings, I only said bird because it sounds nice.

I returned from my aborted shopping excursion as if in a dream. I don’t remember how I
got
back
to my room,
I was thinking so hard about what had happened in front of that department store. Having no desire to sit at the table with Kramer and the others, I ate all the cookies in the desk drawer and washed them down with a Coke. It was dusk when someone knocked. Thinking it was Dr. House, I opened the door. A stranger stood in a dark suit and with a thin black briefcase in his hand. He looked like a funeral director.

“May I come in?” he asked. I stepped back without a word. Not looking around, he sat on a chair, the one I had thrown my pajamas over, put his briefcase on his knees, and took out a bunch of typewritten pages. From his pocket he took pince-nez and set them on his nose, and regarded me awhile in silence. His hair was gray but his eyebrows black, his face gaunt, and his bloodless lips turned down at the comers. I stood by the desk, waiting, and finally he laid his card on the blotter. I read
PROFESSOR ALLEN SHAPIRO
,
I.C.G.D.
The address and telephone number were so small, I couldn’t make them out, but I didn’t pick up the card. I was filled with a weary indifference which was like drowsiness.

“I am a neurologist,” he said. “Fairly prominent.” “Yes, I think I’ve read you,” I mumbled. “Callotomy, the lateralization of brain function… Is that right?”

“Yes. I am also a consultant for the Lunar Agency. It’s thanks to me that you were allowed to proceed as you have. I believe that in the present situation you should be protected but no more than that. The escape attempt was infantile. Consider. You have become the bearer of a priceless treasure.
Geheimnisträger,
the Germans would say. Your every step has been followed and not only by the Agency. To date the Agency has thwarted eight attempts to kidnap you, Mr. Tichy. When you flew to Australia, you were under observation by special satellites and not just ours. It’s been all I can do to keep our own government leaders at bay. They want you arrested, put out of commission, and so on. The advice you obtained through your friend is worthless. When the stakes are high enough, the law means nothing. As long as you are alive, everyone—all the players—are stalemated. This can’t go on. If they are unable to get you, they’ll kill you.”

“Who?” I asked, without surprise. Seeing that this would be a long visit, I took a seat, throwing a few newspapers and books to the floor.

“It doesn’t matter. You have acted in good faith. Your official report was compared with what you wrote here and buried in the jar. In addition the Agency has all the tapes from Control.”

“And?” I said, because he had paused.

“Some is the truth, some confabulation. But not done by design. You believed both what was in your report and what you put down here. When there are gaps in the memory, it is natural for a person to fill them in. One does it quite unconsciously. Anyway we don’t really know if your right brain contains a treasure.”

“Which means?”

“The callotomy might not have been an accident.”

“What then?”

“A maneuver to divert attention.”

“By the moon?”

“It’s possible.”

“Is this really so crucial?” I asked. “The Agency can always send more scouts.”

“And has. You returned after six weeks. Once the diagnosis was made—your callotomy, I mean—three more people were sent.”

“And they didn’t succeed?”

“They succeeded in returning. All of them. Unfortunately…”

“Yes?”

“Their experiences were totally different from yours.”

“Totally?”

“It’s better for you not to know the details.”

“But you know them, so you too, Professor Shapiro, are in danger,” I said with a smile. He nodded philosophically.

“The scientists have a hundred different theories, but there’s general agreement that the classical remotes were no surprise to the moon. The surprise was the molecular remote, your final remote. But now this too the moon is aware of.”

“Which means?”

“You’ve probably already figured it out. You penetrated farther than the ones who followed you.”

“The moon put on a show for them?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“And not for me?”

“You got through the stage sets, at least partly.”

“Why did they let me return?”

“In their strategic game, it was the optimal solution to the problem. You returned, the mission completed, and at the same time did not return or complete your mission. Had you not returned at all, the Security Council would have voted against further reconnaissance.”

“And instead, to destroy the moon?”

“Not destroy so much as neutralize.”

“That’s something new to me. How is it done?”

“There’s a way. Incredibly expensive, since it’s a completely new technology. I don’t know the details. It’s better not to know them.”

“You must have picked up something…” I muttered. “It would have to be a post-atomic technology in any case. No warheads or rockets, something more discreet. Something the moon would not be able to detect in time…”

“For a man with only half a brain, you’re not stupid. But let’s get back to the subject, that is, to you.”

“You want me to agree to be examined? By the Agency? Let them give my right hemisphere the third degree?”

“It’s more complicated than you think. We have, besides your report and the tapes of the mission, certain hypotheses. One says that the individual sectors on the moon are at war. That they have not united, neither for the destruction of some by others nor to plan an attack on Earth.”

“What exactly has happened, then?”

“If we knew exactly, I wouldn’t have to bother you. The barriers between the sectors definitely failed. The military games have engaged each other. It’s produced unprecedented effects.”

“Such as?”

“I’m no expert on this, but as far as I know, there
are
no experts on this. We’re at the mercy of conjecture under the banner of, if you’ll pardon my Latin,
Ceterum censeo humanitatem preservandam esse.”

“What is it you want of me?”

“Nothing at the moment. You are, excuse the metaphor, a man with the plague before there were antibiotics. I came to see you because I insisted. They finally agreed. You are sort of a last resort. Who unfortunately multiplied the possibilities of what is happening on the moon. Speaking plainly, after your return we know less, not more.”

“Less?”

“Of course less. We’re not even sure that your right brain contains any critical information. The number of unknowns has increased.”

“You speak like an oracle.”

“The Lunar Agency transported to the moon and placed into sectors what it was supposed to under the Geneva Agreement. But the computer programs of that first generation remained the secret of the participating nations. The Agency wasn’t privy to them.”

“So it was wild cards from the very beginning?”

“Of course, because of the world’s antagonisms. The question is, is it possible to tell the difference between a program that after a few decades derails from the safeties installed by its designers and a program
designed
to derail in a certain way?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps computer scientists could tell.”

“No, no one can tell except those who wrote the programs.”

“Professor Shapiro,” I said, getting up and going to the window. “I have the impression that you are drawing me into a web. The more we talk, the cloudier the subject becomes. What has happened on the moon? We don’t know. What I experienced there, was it real? We don’t know. What was the reason for this damned callotomy of mine? We don’t know. Does half of my brain hold important information? We don’t know. I most respectfully ask you to get to the point.”