The Artificial Kid Page 3

  I didn’t say anything; I just stood up, whipped speed into my nunchuck, and cracked all three of his cameras. It took about two seconds. I sat down again. Angeluce was completely dumbstruck. I put my nunchuck back around my neck and released its handles. Spinney, Ruffian Jack, and Money Manies all got back into their chairs, from which they had leapt with alacrity as soon as I pulled my ’chuck.

  “Thanks, Kid,” Manies said in relief. “We all appreciate your restraint. Professor, tone down your rhetoric unless you want the Kid to split your head. Kid, I apologize for him; he’s an offworlder and doesn’t know Reverid etiquette. Forgive him, for my sake.”

  “All right, Mr. Manies,” I said magnanimously. “For your sake, I’ll deprive my fans of the entertaining sight of Professor Angeluce beaten to a bloody pulp.” That remark about Professor Crossbow had roused my ire. I was familiar with the Tanglin-Crossbow alliance in the Gestalt Dispute, because Crossbow had told me about it.

  On the other hand, I was now much better disposed toward Saint Anne. I had her pegged. She was one of the dozens, no, hundreds of women overwhelmed at a distance by Tanglin’s charisma. I even liked her some. We shared a common distaste for sex.

  Angeluce was puce with rage, but he wisely refrained from saying anything. Alruddin Spinney spontaneously decided that something had to be done to break the tension. He picked up his pet mantis with both hands and set it on the table facing him, where it bobbed and weaved alertly on its thick, spiny legs. Spinney stuck a shred of raw meat between his lips. “Kiss kiss,” he said. “Kiss kiss!”

  The mantis leaned forward daintily and bit out the meat and a small piece of Spinney’s lower lip. “Yau!” cried Spinney in pain. “Death take it! He did it right fifty times in practice!”

  We all had a good laugh at Spinney’s expense. Then I gave him just a trace of smuff to kill the pain and dabbed on a little quikclot. After he had covered the tiny wound with a scrap of skinseal he was as good as new. While I was ministering to Spinney his mantis leapt off the table with a rattle of wings, hopped into my chair, tipped over my bowl with one spiny forearm and started to pick out the bits of crab.

  Quizein came in with the third course, a thick, creamy, skate’s-egg omelet with kelp salad. It was so incredibly delicious that Angeluce’s appetite apparently overcame his anger.

  “I assume you’ve already prepared for next week’s Quincentennial, dear Manies,” Spinney said, lisping a little. Next week would usher in the five hundredth anniversary of the first settlement on Reverie, Corporate Reverid Year 500. It was an occasion that meant a great deal to surface-dwelling Reverids.

  “Yes, of course,” said Manies. “I’ll be quite busy; I’ve made so many commitments that I’ll have to be everywhere at once. It should prove very lively. The social consensus seems to favor a harlequinade.”

  I had heard the harlequinade rumor, but now that it was confirmed by Money Manies, a prime social arbiter, the rumor had become fact. “Harlequinade, harlequinade,” I said irritably. “I’m sick of these stuffy harlequinades. Why can’t we have a satyricon, or even a splashfest? Death, I’d settle for anything.”

  “A splashfest would hardly be suitable for a state occasion,” Spinney said with a smile. “Even a harlequinade would have seemed awfully wild and extravagant five hundred years ago.”

  Ruffian Jack chuckled coarsely. “Moses Moses would spin in his grave, if he had a grave that wasn’t blown to atoms.”

  “Tut tut, do these aged ears detect a crude defamation of the memory of the Corporate Founder?” asked Money Manies rhetorically, chiding Ruffian Jack with two minimal shakes of one pudgy forefinger. “Alas, Jack, your simple patriotism has been painfully tainted. You raise a blush to the cheek of Reverid modesty.”

  Jack rolled his eyes, but for the moment he seemed to accept Manies’ humorous rebuke.

  “Moses Moses wouldn’t merely spin in his grave,” Spinney said darkly. “It was no ordinary grave. Moses Moses was entombed alive, in a cryocoffin. Unfortunately he was posthumously assassinated three centuries ago by the Fox Day blast. His announced intention was to thaw and return to life in Corporate Reverid Year 500. Politically speaking his reappearance would mean disaster; but speaking as an historian, I would have loved a chance to talk to the man. In many ways he remains an enigma.”

  “Who cares?” boomed Jack callously. “The past is dead, Moses is dead. He’s been dead since Fox Day, anyway, and that’s three hundred years!”

  “But I remember Fox Day,” Money Manies said in a remote voice. “I was amazingly young then. No more than your age, Kid. Death, I haven’t thought about it in ages. Ages. It was quite a commotion, really. We really thought that the whole world was going to collapse. After all, the entire Reverid Board of Directors was wiped out—the Chairman’s Building smashed to rubble—Moses Moses’ cryocrypt blown up! Suddenly we had no government! It amazed everyone. Of course, the Board of Directors was never very vigorous after Moses Moses had himself frozen, but once they were gone we had nowhere to turn. Everyone feared terrorism—anarchy! But it never developed.”

  “No, it didn’t,” said Spinney. “I’ve studied the history tapes. That three-week period of no government was the most amazing episode in our history, if you ask me. All our cities, even the oneills, were hotbeds of rumor. Why had the Board met in secret session, after years of idleness? Who was responsible for the explosion? Then the Rump Board assembled itself—a Board even more lax and meaningless than the first—and suddenly the word was on everybody’s lips. Cabal. Cabal. Reverie was ruled by a conspirator’s council. Faceless men and women. Everyone agreed that they were all rich, all immensely wealthy, but that was the limit of agreement.

  “We knew that they were wealthy, because the Corporate limit on personal wealth was the major schism of the period, and the only cause for a coup d’etat. The progressive faction favored a relaxation of the strictures; the old Board of Directors insisted on the primacy of the word of Moses Moses. Destroying Moses Moses was the quickest way to destroy his hold on Reverid society, to loosen the puritanical discipline of the Mining Years. That was the Cabal’s motive. They had assassinated the entire Board of Directors, destroyed the Founder of the Reverid Corporation, and assumed control. Their immense wealth gave them spies and assassins everywhere, so it was useless to resist. No one could stop such ruthless efficiency. No one even knew the names or faces of the enemy!”

  “Crap,” said Ruffian Jack. “It’s common knowledge that there are thirteen Cabalists. Seven are men and six are women. The men are called Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, Indigo, and Violet. The women are called North, South, East, West, Up, and Down. They live in their own oneills, disguised as ordinary orbiters, and they appoint the Rump Board through their agents. Any ten-year-old could tell you that.”

  “Any ten-year-old surface dweller,” Spinney said. “Oddly enough, most orbiters believe quite the opposite. They’re convinced that the Cabal dwells on the surface.”

  “Mr. Spinney is right,” said Professor Angeluce suddenly. “The agent of the Cabal who met me in orbit assured me that the Cabalists dwell here in Telset, and in Sylvain, Eros, and Jucklet, the four largest cities.” As always, I winced at the mention of “Jucklet.” Jucklet! What a tin ear that Moses Moses had for names!

  “You met an actual agent of the Cabal?” Manies said with interest. “That’s a rare privilege, Professor.”

  “Not so rare,” said Angeluce. “In the oneills your own name is mentioned quite prominently in connection with the Cabal, as you, sir, are no doubt aware. Some allege that the Cabal stifled your political ambitions. Others hint that you yourself may be a member.”

  “Me, a Cabalist? Law forbid!” said Manies. “I have enough trouble managing this menagerie, much less the planet. As for my political ambitions, perish the thought! I am a simple entertainer. And editor. And antiquarian. And social theorist. Oh, I wear many hats, but the thorny wreath of politics has never encumbered my brow, sir, I assure you.”

&nbs
p; “Excellent,” said Angeluce. “Would that I could say the same for some of my misguided rivals.”

  The hypocrisy of this covert reference to Professor Crossbow disgusted me. Crossbow had chosen a political ally, Rominuald Tanglin, for Crossbow’s interstellar war of words with the cobwebbed reactionaries of the Academy. I was a little unsure about the issues involved in the so-called “Gestalt Dispute”—it was before my time, after all—but I knew which side had my sympathies.

  “And what do you call your own alliance with the Cabal, sir, if not ‘political’?” I said. “Surely you’ve demonstrated that you need its bloody-handed help in the promulgation of your own senile meanderings.”

  “Bloody-handed, sir?” said Angeluce, squaring his shoulders. “I should think that adjective better applied to yourself and your fellow hoodlums, rather than to your planetary government. As for my alliance with the Cabal, you may call it what you like. I care as little for your language as you do for ordinary standards of human decency.”

  My hair rose, crackling. Manies, Jack, and Spinney quickly ducked under the table. I stood up. Angeluce stood up. I said, “I think your alliance might be best described, sir, as a double buggery of truth and justice. Your rhetoric is as low and hypocritical as your mind is narrow and mean. You, sir, and your treacherous Academic faction are an immense fishbone in the throat of human enlightenment!” Angeluce was turning white. “There is more information in one strand of Professor Crossbow’s DNA than there is in the entire rattling, desiccated husk you call your brain!”

  Angeluce folded his arms. “Feel free to resort to your usual dastardly violence, sir! As you can see, I am unarmed and unable to resist! Don’t let the presence of a decent human being stop you!” He nodded at Saint Anne Twiceborn, who immediately leapt up from her seat to interpose her body between us. I was getting all this on camera and, unwilling to let her upstage us, I quickly sapped her so that she fell onto the table in a heap.

  “Sir,” I said, “I am sure you would prove as inept in physical combat as you are in a battle of wits! If your lack of weaponry bothers you, feel free to borrow mine!” I threw him my nunchuck. He caught it and, fumbling with it, he cried, “I would not soil my hands with such things!” Clumsily, he flung it over the railing and into the sea.

  “You lout!” I cried. “My favorite ’chuck!” Ignoring my injured leg, I leapt over the table, grabbed him by throat and crotch, and hurled him over the railing to fall screaming into the sea. I had a pair of cameras follow him to record his impotent splashing and wallowing until the servants fished him out. Dusting off my hands, I returned to the table.

  My host and his two friends crawled out from under it. “He had it coming,” Manies said.

  “I’ll say,” said Spinney. He picked up his mantis, which had found a perch on the blunt-cut brown hair of Saint Anne’s head. It picked curiously at the flat cluster of feathers there.

  “A great performance, Kid,” said Ruffian Jack. “Really makes me wish I’d brought my own cameras.”

  “I’ll send you a copy after I edit it,” I said. I opened the sleeve of my pajama and injected two cc’s of tranquilizer into the plastic drugduct in my left forearm. It soon calmed me down. Spinney and I set Saint Anne back in her chair. I slipped a little smuff into her mouth, checked the bump on her head—a small one—and splashed water in her face. She came to immediately.

  “What happened?” she said.

  “You fainted,” I said. “The excitement overwhelmed you.”

  She frowned hesitantly. “I feel very strange. Sort of numbtingly … all over.”

  “It’ll pass,” I said. “Why not relax and enjoy it?”

  “Where’s the Professor?” she asked vaguely.

  “He left suddenly,” Manies said. We all had a hearty laugh, and then Quizein brought in the fourth course.

  At Manies’ insistence, Dr. Kokokla, his personal physician, examined Saint Anne. He assured her that she was all right, gently pointed out that she had bumped her head, and offered her a sedative, which she refused. One of Manies’ pornostars came onto the balcony, carrying my nunchuck, which she had carefully dried. I took it and thanked her; I felt uncomfortable without it.

  “I’ve never fainted before in my life,” said Saint Anne. “And I fail to see how I could have struck myself in the back of the head by falling face-forward. You can spare me your lying tact, sirs. I know that person struck me with that weapon!”

  “Yes, so he did,” admitted Manies. “Forgive me, dear Saint Anne; this spontaneous outbreak of violence was entirely my fault. I must own up to a miscalculation. I greatly enjoy the vigorous clash of disparate personalities, but I never thought that you would go so far as to fling yourself into the midst of a physical combat. Such grandiloquent gestures entail a certain risk!”

  “Oh, stop groveling, Manies!” I said. “Yes, Anne, I slugged you. You upstaged me! As usual, our host is exquisitely considerate and polite; but don’t expect the rest of us to conform to your bizarre notions! Now for heaven’s sake, behave like a civilized person or I’ll fling you over the balcony.” A threat to severely pound Anne would only have roused her stubbornness, but the thought of being embarrassingly and disconcertingly thrown over a balcony made her reconsider. After looking at all of our faces, she took her social cue and sat down sulkily. After a moment she went back to her food. That’s one thing about smuff—it seems to boost appetite and taste. It also completely kills pain, though it numbs, it disorients, it impairs coordination and sometimes hearing.

  “Dear Saint Anne, thank you for being so reasonable,” said Manies. “I give careful thought to picking the guests for these breakfasts, closely following the implied dictates of my Chemical Analogue Theory of the Body Politic—but sometimes I combine too sharp an acid, too bitter a base, and then I must deal with the following explosion! It’s disconcerting, but often quite exhilarating! It keeps me young. I am a very old man, dear Saint; please allow me my quirks.”

  “I forgive you, Mr. Manies,” said Saint Anne. “I believe that you have a good heart. And you have your own kind of wisdom, even if it be an ungodly one.”

  Manies beamed at this as if it were the most flattering compliment ever to touch his ears. Spinney and Ruffian Jack stifled smiles at her naïveté. “I am only fifty-two,” Anne said. “You must have accumulated a lot of learning in such a long lifetime, even if you were never theologically trained. What is your Chemical Analogue Theory?”

  Spinney and Jack rolled up their eyes, but the three of us were happy to hear it, as it gave us the chance to be silent and attack the main course, a tender roast tail of sea beaver that we ate with knives and forks.

  “The Chemical Analogue Theory is, of course, an analogy,” said Manies. He touched a stud on the heavy bracelet on his right wrist and in rushed his secretary Chalkwhistle, a neuter. Manies took pencil and slate from the neuter and began sketching as he talked. “As you are well aware, dear Saint Anne, the human body is an immensely complex system, in fact an ecosystem with its own flora and fauna. The same is true of the Body Politic, our human society. Their reactions, their structures are very similar. Now, the history of the human body is the history of its organic macromolecules, its linkages (pardon me) of separate atoms. Similarly, the history of the Body Politic is the history of many small groups and coteries, linked groups of friends. Of course, I would not go so far as to equate a single personality with a single atom. In most cases people would be better considered as small molecules; acids, bases, salts, et cetera. I often consider them atoms for simplicity’s sake, however.

  “Note that the effect of a single atom in the human body is almost negligible; but if that atom is included in the right molecule, its influence may be crucial! It does not matter which particular atom enters a molecule, you understand; the important thing is that it be the correct kind of atom, and attached in the correct molecular framework! It is the framework that counts, you see, just as the important thing is the relationships within groups of friends
, rather than the friends themselves. Of course some atoms are comparatively rare, just as some personality types are comparatively rare, and they can exert a disproportionate influence; but it is the linkages that count.

  “I regard myself as an enzyme, constantly endeavoring to link molecular groups into newer and more potent configurations. This breakfast is just such an attempt.”

  “In other words it’s not who you are, it’s who you know,” Spinney said. Spinney, Jack, and I were shamelessly gorging ourselves; we had already heard Manies’ ludicrous, disjointed theory several times. It was one of the most visible signs of his age. It was no stranger or crazier than other senile theories cooked up by people his age—Rominuald Tanglin, for instance.

  “Correct! Such statements show an intuitive understanding of this principle,” said Manies happily. “Let me offer a concrete example. Perhaps you recognize this molecule, delta-1 tetra-hydrocannabinol.” He held up his slate.

  “This is a mild hallucinogen and euphoriant,” said Manies. “As you can see, its structure is relatively simple; fifty-three atoms, all carbon, hydrogen, or oxygen, with no troublesome nitrogen or silicon as in so many drugs. I determined to deliberately replicate its structure as a Chemical Analogue, to determine its effect on the actions of the Body Politic. You may recall the occasion, dear Alruddin. It was the Mid-Year Satyricon, five years ago.”

  “Wau, do I!” said Spinney enthusiastically. “What a celebration! People were singing, shouting, laughing, crying, stripping off their costumes, linking right in the streets … howling at the Morning Star, diving off the Coral Towers … and at dawn there was a mass nude swim in Telset Bay! It was incredible, unbelievable!” He sobered. “You’re not claiming you were responsible for that, Money Manies?”

  “Responsible, my dear fellow?” said Manies with a cryptic smile. “You were one of the oxygens! It might have gone on indefinitely if one of my carbons had not eloped with someone else’s hydrogen, breaking the structure down into a mere cannabinoid.… However, I consider the whole episode a strong point in favor of my theory. The experiment was well worth the effort of gathering together fifty-three hand-picked friends. Thank you, Chalkwhistle, that’s all for now.” Manies erased the slate with a touch of his thumb and handed it back to his secretary, who left. “Would anyone care for some sherbet?”