something less comfortable than a hotel room. When Farkas entered the room she remained where she was, seated at a desk along the far wall.
Farkas glanced at the Twenty, who was standing right behind him, with Paolo the technician next to her.
“I’d like to talk to Dr. Wu privately.”
“I’m sorry, Expediter Farkas. A private interview hasn’t been authorized.”
“Oh?”
“We have been instructed to be present during the interview. I’m sorry, Expediter Farkas.”
“I don’t intend to murder him, you know. Her, I mean.”
“If you’d like, we could file a formal application for an exception from the instructions, but it would probably take—”
“Never mind,” Farkas said. What the hell. Let them listen. He turned toward Wu. “Hello again, doctor.”
“What do you want with me?” Wu asked, not sounding especially charmed.
“Just a visit. A social visit. I asked permission to have a little talk with you.”
“Please. I am an employee of Kyocera-Merck now. I have the right not to be bothered when I am off duty.”
Farkas took a seat on a kind of low sofa next to the desk. In a quiet voice he said, “I’m afraid you don’t have the option of refusing, Dr. Wu. I’ve requested this meeting and the request has been granted. But I do want it to be a friendly visit.”
“Friendly.”
“Friendly, yes. I mean that sincerely. We aren’t enemies. As you said, we are both employees of Kyocera- Merck.”
“What do you want with me?” Wu said again.
“I’ve told you. A social visit. Bygones are bygones, do you understand what I’m saying?”
Wu did not reply.
Farkas said, “So tell me: how do you like your new accommodations? Everything to your satisfaction? What do you think of the laboratory that’s been fixed up for you?”
“The accommodations are as you see. I have lived in worse places, and also better ones. As for the laboratory, it is a very fine one. Most of the equipment is beyond my understanding.” Wu’s voice was all on the same pitch, flat and dull and dead, as though modulating the tone a little would be too expensive.
“You’ll learn how to use it,” Farkas said.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps not. My knowledge of the field is years out of date. Decades. There’s no assurance that I can do the work you people are expecting from me.”
“Nevertheless,” Farkas said. “Here you are. Here you’ll stay, being comfortably looked after, until you accomplish something worthwhile or the Company decides that you really aren’t going to be of any use. My hunch is that as you familiarize yourself with the equipment in your new lab, you’ll become very excited by the progress that’s been made in your field since you left it, and that you’ll relearn your old skills very fast and pick up all the new ones. After all, there’s no risk for you, is there, doctor? Your work here will be strictly legal.”
“My work was always strictly legal,” Wu said, in the same sullen robotic monotone.
“Ah. Ah, now. That’s what I wanted to talk about.”
Wu was silent.
Farkas said, “Did you ever think, Dr. Wu, that your experimental subjects in the Tashkent laboratory didn’t especially want their genetic material altered?”
“I am not required to discuss this. You indicated that bygones would be bygones.”
“Not required, no. But I’d like you to. I don’t feel any vindictiveness, but I do have some curiosity. Quite a lot of curiosity, in fact, things I really want to learn from you about yourself.”
“Why must I answer you?”
“Because you did a monstrous thing to me,” Farkas said, still keeping his voice quiet but for the first time putting an edge on it, a whiplash crackle. “That gives me the right to get some answers out of you, at the very least. Tell me a few things, out of simple human compassion. You
“You will kill me, is that not so, when I am finished with my work in this place.”
“Will I? I don’t know. I don’t see where it would do me any good, and it seems like a petty thing to do. Of course, if you happen to
“No. No.”
“Well, then.” Farkas smiled. “If I really wanted to kill you, Dr. Wu, I would have done it on Valparaiso Nuevo. I’m not so completely the creature of Kyocera-Merck that I would put the Company’s interests ahead of my own to that extent. So obviously I saw no point in killing you when I had the chance. I was content instead just to carry out the assignment that I had been sent to Valparaiso Nuevo to do, which was to deliver you to Cornucopia so that you could perform certain research on behalf of the Company, research for which you had unique qualifications.”
“You did your job, yes. It matters a great deal to you, to do your job. And when the Company is through with me,
“To give me reasons for not killing you when the Company is finished using you.”
“How could I possibly do that?”
“Well,” said Farkas. “Let’s see, shall we? Perhaps if I could come to understand your side of the event a little better I’d be more inclined toward being merciful. For instance: when you were doing your experiments on fetuses in Tashkent, what exactly did you feel, in here, in your heart, about the nature of your work?”
“It was all such a long time ago.”
“Almost forty years, yes. Some of those fetuses have since turned into large grown men without eyes. But you must remember a little about it. Tell me, doctor: did you experience any hesitation at all, any kind of moral qualms, when you set about working on me in my mother’s womb? Any kind of ethical queasiness? Or pity, say?”
Wu said stolidly, “What I felt was intense scientific curiosity. I was trying to learn things that seemed important to discover. We learn by doing.”
“Using human victims.”
“Human subjects, yes. That was necessary. The human genome is different from that of animals.”
“Ah, not true, not true! Not really. You could have experimented with chimpanzee fetuses and had pretty much the same set of genes to work with. You know that, doctor.”
“The chimpanzees would not have been able to report to us verbally on the nature of the extended perceptions they could attain using blindsight.”
“I see. Only humans could do that.”
“Exactly.”
“And a supply of humans was readily available while you were in Tashkent, thanks to the chaos of the Breakup. Unborn humans, highly suitable for genetic experimentation. Your intense scientific curiosity therefore was going to be satisfied, and you were very happy about that. But even so, it would have been more ethical if you had asked the mothers of the unborn humans for permission to operate, wouldn’t it? My mother, for example, not only gave no permission, but was in fact a foreigner, a foreigner with diplomatic immunity. Nevertheless—”
“What do you want me to say?” Wu cried. “That I did a terrible thing to you? Yes. Yes. I admit it. I did a terrible thing. I took advantage of helpless people in a time of war. You want me to say that I’m evil? That I feel remorse for my crimes? That I am willing to have you kill me for the crime I committed against you? Yes. I acknowledge that I am evil. I am racked with remorse. I feel unbearable guilt and I know that I deserve to be punished. What are you waiting for? Kill me right now! Go ahead, Farkas, wring my miserable neck and be done with it!”
The Level Twenty girl said uneasily, from where she stood near the door, “Mr. Farkas, it’s probably not a good idea for this conversation to continue. Perhaps we ought to go now. I can show you to your accommodation chamber, and—”
“Give me another minute,” Farkas said. He turned back to Wu, who had subsided again into sullen stillness. “You didn’t mean a word of that, did you, doctor? You continue to feel to this day that what you did to me and the others like me in Tashkent was perfectly justifiable in the holy name of science, and you don’t have a contrite bone
