C H A P T E R 1 3
The conference table in the lowest level of the nose had been draped with a rich cloth and laid with china, silver, and candles, and the color of the panorama outside the ship had turned a rich blue-black, indicating that we had taken an eastern turn into the deeper waters of the Atlantic, away from the waste that had marked the coast. The ship’s exterior lights cut lovely shafts through these storied depths, yet even as I admired the beauty there seemed something odd about the sight, something lonely that I couldn’t initially explain. I tried to shake the feeling off, attributing it to my own general sense of being on my own in a strange place—and then I realized that it actually stemmed from the surprising but very apparent lack of any signs of life in the water.
Tarbell was already standing by the table, along with the Kupermans; and although I couldn’t see who was responsible for the cooking or where it was being done, the aromas filling the area were singularly appetizing. Tarbell handed me a glass of his personal vodka—a Russian brand I did not know—and then Eli Kuperman asked:
“You like lamb, don’t you, Dr. Wolfe? Medium rare, I think it was. It’ll be ready in just a few minutes.”
“None of us has time to eat much during the day,” Jonah Kuperman added, heading through a small door that evidently led to some sort of galley, where I could see Julien Fouché laboring in a sweat over a stainless-steel stove. “So we try to make dinners as civilized as we can.”
I picked up a few pieces of the china and silver: very elegant and very old. “I guess you do” was all I could say, taking a sip of Tarbell’s vodka and trying yet again to orient myself: after all, moments earlier I’d been standing in this same area watching a battle take place outside. “I don’t suppose,” I went on, “that anybody would like to tell me what it is that keeps you all so busy during the day? I mean, when you’re not busting people out of jail.”
Fouché raised his voice to call from the galley, “That should never have happened! A pet project of les frères Kuperman that grew completely out of hand!”
“Oh, come on, Julien!” Eli shot back. “It had just as much validity as anything else we’ve done. You’ve seen the statistics: gambling’s become an epidemic since the crash, and there’s no way I’m going to let a lot of anthropologically nonsensical folklore rationalize it. If we’d been able to plant that evidence—”
“ ‘Plant?’ ” I interrupted, surprised. “You mean you weren’t stealing anything?”
Jonah Kuperman threw me a friendly glance. “There’s really nothing in that particular burial site worth stealing, Dr. Wolfe.”
“Gideon,” I said.
“All right—Gideon. Well, as you probably know, it’s been apparent for years that the various peoples who call themselves ‘Native Americans’ were not, in fact, the first inhabitants of this continent. But many of the tribes have attempted to suppress or destroy evidence that might support this conclusion. They’re afraid, and with reason, that if they’re suddenly revealed as simple conquerors of their predecessors, they’ll lose emotional and historical justification for a lot of questionable activities—including the creation of a generation of gambling addicts in their casinos.”
“That burial ground in Florida,” Eli said, “is currently being explored by a team from Harvard, and Jonah and I were trying to slip several artifacts in to demonstrate—”
Eli cut his words short at the sound of Malcolm Tressalian’s wheelchair moving about on the control level above us. From the looks on the faces of the men on the lower level with me, I could see that they were all concerned as to what shape their leader was in. They relaxed again, however, when we all heard Tressalian call out:
“It simply would not be dinner without one of our rousing professional differences of opinion! Though you’ll find, Dr. Wolfe, that these discussions can become quite personal as the evening wears on.”
Slow, heavy steps on the metal staircase indicated that Tressalian was making his way down with the aid of his crutches, and soon he appeared, his light blue eyes bearing no trace of the agony that had filled them earlier. Behind him I could see Colonel Slayton, ever on the alert for any sign of trouble, as well as Larissa, who looked only more beautiful for having brought us through a hard-fought engagement with law enforcement.
“Well, gentlemen, whom are we beating up on tonight?” Tressalian went on. It occurred to me that once they saw that he had recovered from his bout of illness, none of the others thought to ask the man how he felt, even though the attack that had seized first his head and then his entire body had been savage. I took my cue from their example, remembering Tarbell’s statement that these episodes were something of a regular occurrence and assuming, as I had when I’d first seen him struggle out of his wheelchair, that help and sympathy were not things Tressalian desired.
“Oh, Malcolm, it’s absurd!” bellowed Fouché, who appeared from the galley. “Eli and Jonah continue to maintain that their Florida escapade was worth the trouble it brought!”
As a general though still good-natured uproar ensued, Larissa moved up close to me. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to settle you in,” she said quietly, her dark eyes gleaming in the soft light even more than her silver hair. “Was everything all right?”
“Yes, perfectly,” I answered, again feeling very self-conscious in her presence. “Dr. Tarbell did his best to help me get my bearings, though it was a tall order. But your brother—is he—?”
“Fine, now,” she said, even more quietly. “But we can talk about that later.”
The argument around the table continued, eventually prompting Tressalian to hold up his hands: “Decorum, gentlemen, please. Jonah, Eli—I think that for the foreseeable future we’ll have to ask you to confine your activities concerning the gambling issue to informational pursuits. No one faults your zeal—we all know the extent of the problem and the false assumptions that underlie it. But there are far larger matters at hand just now. Not to mention that we are being unspeakably rude to our guest, who, unless I’m mistaken, understands only a fraction of what we’re talking about.”
I shook my head once with a smile. “You are certainly not mistaken.”
“Then let’s be seated while Julien serves.” Tressalian moved to the head of the table, directing me to sit beside him. “We shall try to clarify the situation, Doctor, after which you can see our ideas at work in Afghanistan.” He leaned toward me, the blue eyes alight. “And then you can decide if a life of brewing global chaos holds any appeal . . .”
C H A P T E R 1 4
Fouché soon emerged from the galley bearing great platters of simply but delicately prepared food: the kind of diet, I immediately realized as I glanced at Tressalian, that would appeal to a man with a severe neurological condition. This impression was confirmed when I observed that he drank no alcohol.
“Excuse me,” I said as I studied the man, “but did you say ‘global chaos’?”
“Oh, all in a good cause,” he rushed to reply. “Well—generally, at any rate. But to understand that cause I’m afraid you’ll first have to wrap your mind around the philosophy we’ve all chosen to share.”
“I’m listening.”
Tressalian nodded. “Well, then, where to start? Perhaps simple observation would be best. Did you enjoy the sights along the coast?”
I looked up suddenly: Was that why the ship had spent so long in those filthy waters? To make an impression on me, just as Larissa had done when she’d so expertly manned the ship’s big rail gun during the battle with our pursuers? “It was fairly depressing,” I said carefully.
“And the sea around us now,” Tressalian went on. “Does anything appear to be missing?”
“Just the fish,” I joked; but the tableful of straight faces that looked back at me indicated how terribly serious my words had actually been. “Jesus,” I fumbled. “Have things really gotten that bad?”
“The sights speak for themselves, Doctor,” Colonel Slayton said gravely, running a finger along t
he scar on the side of his face. “The Atlantic seaboard is almost literally a hog sty, and the last of the important fish species, thanks to government lies about enforcing fishing regulations around the world, have been chased into the furthest recesses of the ocean, where they’ll be found and, soon enough, slaughtered.” He kept gently rubbing that scar, reminding me of how much “government lies” had contributed to his own disastrous experiences during the Taiwan campaign.
“Yes,” Tressalian agreed gloomily. “I only wish I could say that such developments were outside the norm of modern human behavior. And yet, according to a generation of rhetoric, our own age should have separated itself from that norm, shouldn’t it, Doctor?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, after all, the dawn of this century did present humanity with an enormous opportunity to improve both its own lot and the condition of the planet. The necessary tools were all at hand.” His voice became distinctly ironic. “The age of information had been born.”
I was puzzled by his tone. “Yes—thanks in large part to your father.”
Tressalian’s irony quickly took on a hard edge. “True. Thanks in large part to my father . . .”
I pushed my plate aside and leaned forward. “You referred to his work earlier as a ‘sin’—why?”
“Come now, Doctor,” Tressalian answered, toying with a slender silver knife. “I think you know exactly why. And what’s more, I suspect that you agree with the assessment.”
“I may share some of your opinions,” I said, weighing the statement. “But I also may have arrived at them through entirely different reasoning.”
He smiled again. “Oh, I doubt that. But let’s investigate, shall we?” He struggled to his feet, having eaten only half his food, and began to slowly circle the table. “Yes, Doctor, my father and his colleagues made certain that most of the world was given access to the modern Internet. To what was marketed—quite seductively and, of course, successfully—as ‘unrestricted information.’ And in an era when capitalism and global free trade had triumphed and were running rampant, such men had little trouble further promoting the belief that by logging on to that Internet, one was tapping in to a vast system of freedom, truth—and power. The mass of mankind withdrew to its terminals and clicked away, and those afflicted with philosophical scruples allowed themselves to be cajoled into believing that they were promoting the democratic cause of a free exchange not only of goods and information but of ideas as well. Convinced, in other words, that they were changing the world, and for the better.”
His face turned toward the ocean again, and his manner softened once more. “Yet in the meantime, inexplicably but undeniably, the water and the air grew dirtier than they had ever been. New pandemics appeared, with no medicines to treat them. Poverty, anarchy, and conflict ravaged more and more parts of the world.” He sighed once, his brow arching. “And the fish—disappeared . . .” When he turned to me again, his face radiated a paradoxical and disquieting calm. “How did it happen, Dr. Wolfe? How, in an age when the free flow of information and trade was supposedly creating a benevolent global order, did all this happen?”
Just then the shipwide address system issued another gently throbbing alarm, at which Colonel Slayton announced that there was to be another “system transfer” in two minutes. “We’re heading into the stratosphere for a few hours, Dr. Wolfe,” Tressalian said. “How would you feel about coffee and dessert at seventy thousand feet?”
I hadn’t noticed, but during dinner the ship had inclined its angle of progress, and in just a few seconds the rippling image of the nearly full moon became visible through the surface of the ocean. Maintaining its speed, the vessel rushed up out of the water and into the open air, its superconductive electromagnetic generators propelling it into the heavens at a fantastic rate that did not even rattle the china on the table.
Colonel Slayton moved quietly toward the stairs and headed up to the control level with calm purpose. “There’s no need to contact the island, Colonel,” Tressalian called after him. “I’ve already double-checked the apparatus. We’re set for dawn.”
“Sorry, Malcolm,” Slayton answered, continuing his climb. “The military penchant for redundancy dies hard.”
Tressalian laughed quietly in my direction. “The Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan,” he explained, “have refused to heed our warnings about the American strike, so we’ll have to force them to leave. They’ve got their women and children down in those tunnels with them, and that’s not blood I particularly want on my hands.”
“But how can you force them to go?” I asked.
“Well—I could tell you, Doctor,” Tressalian said as he began to drag his body away from the transparent hull. “But I think it’ll be far more effective if you observe.”
C H A P T E R 1 5
Once we’d leveled off in the thin, cold stratospheric air, Tressalian led a slow procession up to the observation dome atop the nose of the ship. As we stopped by the guidance center on the middle level to pick up his wheelchair, I saw and heard the consoles of monitors blinking and humming under Colonel Slayton’s direction, and noted that my earlier amazement at the fantastic advances embodied in the ship was beginning to fade. I found myself marveling at how quickly the human mind can accept and become adjusted to technological leaps—although of course, Tarbell’s vodka and Larissa’s continued and ever-more-pointed physical overtures were going a long way, on this particular night, toward assisting my own acclimation. But ultimately it was a testament to the seductive power of technology, a power that my host—who refused to explain any further about the Afghanistan business until we got there—expounded on as he sat in his wheelchair in the observation dome:
“While the average citizen, Doctor, was engaged in this mass love affair with information technology—and while the companies that produced that technology happily painted themselves as the democratizing agents of a new order—real economic and informational power, far from being decentralized, became concentrated in an ever-decreasing number of megacorporations, companies that determined not only what information was purveyed but which technologies were developed to receive and monitor it. And while in your own country there was at least a struggle early on for control over this mightiest and most pervasive public influence in history, the crash of ’07 put an end to the fight. In a collapsing world, Washington had no one to turn to for help except my father and his ilk. And they offered it, to be sure—but only for a price.”
“To put it simply,” Colonel Slayton said as he rejoined us from the control level, “they purchased the government.”
Tressalian smiled at him, then turned back to me. “The colonel has a gift for brevity that is sometimes mistaken for detachment. But remember that no one experienced the practical effects of what we’re talking about more than the soldiers of the Taiwan campaign, who—as you yourself have pointed out, Doctor—unknowingly sacrificed themselves for a bigger share of the Chinese market. Yes, the information technocrats, my father among them, purchased the government, and after that all legislative initiatives and material resources were diverted from regulatory programs, from environmental and medical research, from education and foreign aid, even from weapons development—diverted from everything, that is, save the opening of new markets and the expansion of old ones.”
“All right,” I agreed, Larissa’s ever-closer presence making me feel steadily more at ease. “I’ll admit I agree with you, but so what? You’ve said yourself that this sort of thing has happened before in human history.”
“Non, Gideon,” Julien Fouché said as he wrapped one meaty hand around a small espresso cup. “That is most distinctly not what Malcolm has said. The beginning of the story may have precedents, but this last chapter? There has never been anything like it. The floodgates were thrown open, and human society, already saturated with information, began to drown in it. Tell me—you are familiar, I suppose, with the concept of the ‘threshold moment’? When a process increases so dras
tically in rate and severity—”
“That a quantitative change actually becomes a qualitative one,” I finished for him. “Yes, Professor, I know.”
“Well, then,” Fouché went on, “let us put it to you that world civilization has itself reached just such a moment.”
I sat back for a moment. Extreme as his words might have sounded, they could not be dismissed, given their source. “You’re saying,” I eventually answered, “that the growth of these latest technologies has been so quantitatively different from other informational developments—from, say, the invention of the printing press—that the effect has been a qualitative shift in the nature of society itself?”
“Précisément,” Fouché answered with a nod. “But don’t look so amazed, Doctor. The people behind these technologies have themselves been claiming for years that they were bringing about enormous changes. It is simply that we who are assembled here view those changes as”—he took a sip of espresso as he struggled to find a word—“ominous.”
Then it was Leon Tarbell’s turn: “The ‘information age’ has not created any free exchange of knowledge, Gideon. All we have is a free exchange of whatever the sexless custodians of information technology consider acceptable.”
“And the very nature of that technology means that there is no real knowledge anymore,” Eli Kuperman piled on, “because what those custodians do allow to slip through their delivery systems is utterly unregulated and unverifiable. Mistaken facts—or, worse yet, deceptions on a simple or a grand scale, supported by doctored evidence and digitally manipulated images—become commonly accepted wisdom before there’s even been a chance to determine the validity of their bases.”
“And remember,” Jonah Kuperman added, “that we’ve now raised not one but several generations of children who have been exposed only to that kind of questionable data—”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down!” I finally called out, holding up my hands. During the brief respite that followed, I let out a deep, troubled breath. “This is starting to sound like some kind of runaway conspiracy theory—technoparanoia of the worst kind. What in the world makes you think that people can pull off deceptions on a level that will change the fundamental underpinnings of entire societies, for God’s sake?”