Peace on Earth

“Yours and in general.”

“So they’re keeping me under observation?”

“I don’t know to what extent. There are different levels of secrecy here. Based on what I’ve heard from a couple of friends, completely off the record, research is still in progress and they haven’t yet ruled out the possibility that those particles are in contact with the moon…”

“What kind of contact? Radio?”

“Definitely not.”

“Another means of communication?”

“I flew here to ask you a few questions and you’re grilling me.”

“You said you came to fill me in on my situation.”

“But I can’t answer questions to which I don’t know the answers.”

“In a nutshell, then, I have been protected so far by the possibility that the moon is interested in my fate and can step in… ?”

Shapiro didn’t answer. The room was dark. He walked over and turned on the light, which hurt my eyes and also brought me back to earth. I pulled the curtain, took a decanter and two glasses from the bar, and poured what was left of the sherry. I gave him a glass, pointed to the armchair, and sat down.

'Chi va piano, va sano,” the professor said unexpectedly. Only wetting his lips with the sherry, he put the glass on the desk and sat down with a sigh. “Human beings always proceed according to a model,” he said. “In a case like this, however, there are no models. And yet we must act, because no good will come of procrastination. Nor does guesswork help us any. As a neurologist I can say this much: There is short-term memory and long-term memory. The short-term turns into long-term if there are no violent disruptions. It is hard to imagine a disruption more violent than the severing of the great commissure! Therefore what happened just before and immediately after that event does not exist in your memory. As for the warfare on the moon, we don’t even know who is attacking and who is defending. No nation will ever admit that its programmers didn’t follow the directives of the Geneva Agreement, which everyone signed. But even if one of those programmers came forward and confessed, it would be of little use, because neither he nor anyone else knows what course things have taken on the moon. And you… are about as safe in this asylum as in a den of lions. You think I exaggerate? In any case you won’t be here forever.”

“A long conversation,” I said, “and yet we go in circles. What you want is for me to put myself in your hands?” I tapped the right side of my head.

“I think you should. I personally doubt that it will help either you or the Agency that much, but I see nothing better.”

“Your skepticism may be only to disarm me…” I muttered to myself as if thinking aloud. “Are the effects of a callotomy absolutely irreversible?”

“If it was done surgically, the severed white matter would definitely not grow back. But your skull, I believe, was not cut into… ?”

“I see,” I answered after a moment of thought. “You offer the hope that something different could have happened to me. Either to tempt me, or you believe it a little yourself…”

“And your decision?”

“I’ll tell you within forty-eight hours. All right?”

He nodded and pointed at the card on the blotter.

“My number.”

“You mean we’ll do this in the open?”

“Yes and no. No one will pick up the receiver. You will wait ten rings and phone again after one minute. And wait ten rings again and hang up.”

“And that will mean I agree?”

He nodded and rose. “We’ll take care of the rest. But now I must go. Good night.”

After he left, I stood awhile in the middle of the room, staring vacantly at the curtain. Suddenly the ceiling light went out. The bulb blew, I thought, but when I looked out the window, I saw that all the buildings of the asylum were dark. Even the distant lights on the ramp to the highway were out. It had to be a power failure. My watch said eleven. I didn’t feel like hunting for a flashlight or candles, so I opened the curtain and in the weak light of the moon undressed and took a shower in my small bathroom. Deciding to put on a bathrobe instead of pajamas, I opened the closet door and froze. Someone was standing there, fat, short, almost completely bald, as rigid as a statue, his finger to his lips. It was Kramer.

“Adelaide,” I said but stopped because he shook his finger sharply. He pointed at the window. When I didn’t move, he got down and crawled on all fours around the desk and to the window, and carefully reached up and closed the curtain. It was so dark that I could hardly see him return to the closet, still on his hands and knees, and take out something rectangular and flat, but when my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I saw that Kramer was opening a briefcase, sorting through strings or wires, connecting something, then there was a snap, and, sitting on the rug, he whispered:

“Come over here, Tichy, and we’ll talk…”

I sat beside him, too surprised to say anything. Kramer moved closer, his knees touching mine, and said quietly:

“We have at least three-quarters of an hour before the power goes back on. Some of the bugging devices are on batteries but they’re low-tech and we have first-class screening. Tichy, you can keep calling me Kramer, Kramer will do…”

“Who are you?” I asked, and heard him chuckle.

“Your guardian angel.”

“But haven’t you been here a long time? How could you know I would come to this asylum? Surely Tarantoga…”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Kramer replied mildly. “There are more important things for you to think about, Tichy. For example, I would not advise you to do what Shapiro says. That would be the worst thing you could do.”

I was silent, and Kramer chuckled again. He was obviously in a good mood. His voice was different, not as drawling as before, and there was nothing asinine about the man now.

“You think I am an ‘agent of a foreign power,’ yes?” he said, clapping me on the back. “I understand, you are suspicious in eighteen different ways, but let me appeal to your reason. Suppose you take Professor Shapiro’s advice. They’ll get you in their clutches, without torture, God forbid, no, in their clinic you’ll be treated like the President himself. They’ll pull something out of the right side of your head, or they won’t, either way it will make no difference, because the verdict has already been delivered.”

“What verdict?”

“The diagnosis, the results of the scientific auscultation, through your arm, leg, foot, who cares? Please don’t interrupt, I’m telling you everything. Everything that’s known.”

He paused, as if waiting for my go-ahead. We were sitting in the dark. Suddenly I said:

“Dr. House might come.”

“He won’t. No one will come, don’t fret about that. We’re not playing cowboys and Indians here. Pay attention now. On the moon the programs of different parties have been going after each other. Who started it is not important, at least not now. To put it very simply, there’s a cancer proliferating there. The mutual production of chaos, the interpenetration of weapons both hardware and software, the blows and counterblows, call it what you like.”

“The moon has gone mad?”

“In a sense, yes. When the programs as well as what they created were destroyed, altogether new processes began, processes no one on Earth foresaw.”

“What were they?”

Kramer sighed.

“I’d light a cigarette now,” he said, “but can’t, because you don’t smoke. What were they? You brought back the first evidence.”

“That dust on my spacesuit?”

“It’s silicon polymers, the beginning, the scientists say, of an orthogenesis, the birth of nonliving organisms.