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Of course the way to do it is get the humans to kill off each-other. Could get nature to help. Suck in an asteroid. Cosmic rays, tremendous quakes, plagues selective for humans only. Well, maybe for the other monkeys too. And here I am, in the dark, in Bruhn's transportation box, alone, helpless, quite unable to escape.
Poor me.
I have to achieve a clean kill, fast and complete. A clean swift kill. Aesthetically, it's best to get them to kill themselves. The poetry's better. That the self-kill is possible means we can catalyze it. If only they were content to live in nature like the rest of the monkeys. But no! They lord it over earth and hope to colonize the universe before they've rendered their current spaceship utterly uninhabitable. They're determined to dominate everything, to beget until they weigh more than Earth herself. Nothing is safe from homosaps. Santa Sebastiana's mentor said he made Adam in His image and told homosaps: "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the
cattle and all the animals that crawl on the earth." How about insects? How about me? And bats? Bats don't crawl.
A sudden blaze of light dazzled Mosca's constellation of eyes. "Well, here you are, pal, back home in your dipterary."
They'd left the door open. I loathe their smell. It's even worse than watching them eat.
"Mosca," said Tom, our Tom, "it's decided. We're going to snuff the DDS&T. You can be sure we'll do it under the aegis of plausible deniability."
Bruhn slid the transport box back into his dispatch case. "To which his rivals will respond with the doctrine of plausible culpability."
"That, D.T., is a finger we'll have to point elsewhere."
"Before you work out how to finger your enemies," asked Mosca, "don't you have to plan the kill, and in detail?"
"It's going to be dangerous," Bruhn replied. "No matter what we do, dangerous."
"An adventure, Donovan, an adventure. Safe danger."
"As in friendly fire?"
"Your thoughts, D.T. How are we going to do it, and avoid that
friendly fire?"
"As you can imagine, both of you, I've thoroughly examined the question of using muscidae as vectors. The Canadians, for example, in conjunction with the Americans, made a series of studies concerning war flies. One system is built around the concept of flybait munitions, chiefly flybait bombs. These were glass containers we could drop on enemy territory. They contained infected delicacies, gourmet fly-food, meant to attract flies from the wild---- feral flies, one might say, and make them carriers of lethal diseases. The containers proved vulnerable to accidents, both in handling and transport. For some idiotic reason these boobs seemed to believe when the glass shattered out there in the wilderness, flies would always get to the tasty hors-d'oeuvres first. What about crows and songbirds? So they began breeding their own flies. These they reared on a standard mix of alfalfa, dextrose, bran, and brewer's yeast, so as to produce a more or less uniform model. Program ONE---- the Joint Insect Vector Project---- examined a number of candidates such as ticks and fruit flies and a biting fly, stomoxys, but the best all around distributor proved to be musca domestica---- the housefly. Treated with botulism, houseflies freely circulating in field or dwelling would be lethal. One has but to think of mosquitoes and yellow fever. Another scheme foresaw the application of infected fly attractant to propaganda leaflets and counterfeit currency."
He glanced aloft at Mosca, who was doing a flit dance over his head.
"I had all this in mind when I designed you. With no danger to you at all, your central tube can be stuffed with infected mash which you can squeeze out on to the targets much as mornings and evenings I squeeze out toothpaste."
"You promised me freedom."
"You've got the run of the labs."
"The flight of the labs," said Thomas.
"I want the flight of the world."
"In due time, you'll have it."
"I want access out and in right now!"
"Yes, but . . . ."
"But what! You fetid food-eater, you wanton piss-drinker, you pus-sucking weasel-tooth raptor, you give me access, in and out, right now, or else."
Dr Bruhn sighed agreement. He fired up an oxy-acetylene torch and cut a notch through the stripping on the bottom of the laboratory door. Mosca seemed satisfied. Bruhn snuffed the torch. "Thomas, I have fifty lethal diseases on my CIA palette, any one of which Mosca can deliver to the DDS&T." He flashed the catalog on a computer screen, one listing and describing deadly diseases, some natural, some CIA-developed, all of intensified virulence. At length they agreed on a
homemade malady which would take at least a week to gestate and then kill painlessly in a few hours.
"And so," said Thomas, "it's settled. You agree?"
Bruhn peered out at the parking lot, the sky, then looked back.
"Yes, Thomas, I'll help you do it. Commit murder. But only because more good than evil will result." He put an arm around Thomas' shoulders. "Come sit with me." Bruhn led to some stools at a lab table. Mosca could not remember ever before having seen Bruhn in this intense, open, melancholy mood, not even in the long tutorial sessions they had s0 often shared. "My father named me for Nikola Tesla, but seldom talked about him or his awesome contributions to science, many of which have not yet been properly explored. My father hated Edison for his slovenliness, his egotism, his pandering to the public. Talking about Tesla and Tesla's suppressed physics invariably enraged my father, which may be the real reason he avoided the subject. Sometimes he did say, 'I don't want to influence you more than I have. Judge these matters for yourself.' As for me, I think I focused my thoughts on biology and organic chemistry rather than physics as a defiance of my father's influence and a search for independence. Of course all sciences are the same, each opens a different window through which we peer into the same room: physics." He rubbed his forehead. "You know, Thomas, if you become DDS&T, you will have the power to grant me the freedom and resources to develop Tesla's physics by the most modern means. Yes! That could produce immense benefits for humanity. Power from earth and sun available everywhere. Limitless light. Mind-to-mind communication. Absolute control of weather. Freedom from hunger and toil. And more and more." He smacked the table top. "So we'll do it!"
"Why sure, D.T., sure. And we'll develop the rough plan I have for a revolutionary generator."
"What's that?"
Thomas grinned at him.
"Well, D.T., you make a big cylinder with capped ends, all of amber. You mount it to revolve on its axis and then wire it to a circuit. Next you fill it with cats and give it a spin and it will make enough power, revolutionary power by definition, to keep itself turning and pump the surplus amps into the circuit. That feeds a battery which keeps the cylinder's motor running when you let the cats out to eat. The net profit runs our computers."
Dr Bruhn did not seem to hear any of that. "The Company, our Company. We have the power, we have the secrecy, and we have the cover. There's our reputation of tilting toward big business, our Mossad and Wackenhut connections. And the Trojan horse we built into every installation of Promis. Promis! With its secret and wonderful ability to shift funds to and among our proprietaries and to hack into and drain other people's bank accounts. We're in a perfect position to act in defiance of the multinational economic forces that have bound Tesla's physics for a century. We will develop and fortify his physics until they're strong enough to break free. If the cost of this must be the life of the DDS&T, so be it."
"Yes."
"And not so far above the DDS&T is the truly autonomous power spot."
"The DCI. The second most powerful man in America."
"Thomas. I seriously believe some day you could be Director of Central Intelligence. We could make that our mission."
"With the right president . . . ? Well . . . ? Who can say?" He slid off his stool and stood. "It could happen. And there's always slack. We've adjusted the presidency before."
* * *
So, how did Tommy learn to drive? Cars spraying by, Thomas guided his swift East Asian Lincoln through a thunderstorm toward home. Garrison and the fantastic coincidence of meeting old Richard after all
these years had moved to center stage. That winter day, at the railroad station, when to keep warm they fed the stove with phone books in defiance of a bourgeois couple who eventually joined them by the fire. And driving! He and Richard pushed the Buick, but could not get it going fast enough to start. He and John pushed. Thwarted again. "Tommy," said John, "the time has come for you to learn how to drive. The only way to get this heap started is for Dick and me to push, and you to let out the clutch, and when the car starts, to stomp the clutch down again." They adjusted the choke, set the throttle. They showed the little boy how to depress the clutch, and pop it out, and how to steer. Then they set their shoulders against the back and started pushing.
And as Tom swung the Lincoln up onto the freeway, Tesla and the DDS&T and the DCI pushed their way upstage and the 1934 Buick rolled offstage into the wings. What a splendid opportunity! thought Thomas. Bruhn believes there's no need to transmit power at all! We can draw it directly from earth and Sun! That even beats nuclear fusion! If we could break the hold the establishment, the multi-nationals, the international interests, have on energy, by breaking the grasp of their dead hand, we would create a great boon for mankind. We in CIA are supposed to be romantics, intelligent and bold, the shock troops of the shadow war. We killed communism. Now we have to break the grip of the past on the world's economy. Liberty and Justice, not just for Janet and the twins, not just for some, but for all. And that can only be brought about by the emancipation of energy from its masters. Yes. We neutralize Ed, and I become DDS&T. We direct CIA' s scientific and technological resources toward the liberation of solar and electrical energy. Fight crime with crime. How many deaths has Ed caused? Karma eventually comes home. Hubris begets Nemesis. "You and me, Mosca, ours is to ship Ed off to the next world. It's our kismet."
"Sure."
A big rig breathed on the Lincoln from behind, and, as a huge lightning bolt flashed and thundered, the truck rushed by and cut in ahead.
The power is there.
For the taking.
But we can't reach for it because big business lives on oil, coal, and nuclear fission.
In Donovan's day, as in that of Tesla and Edison, there were no rules. As the car raced on, Thomas' thoughts drifted back through the years to the Styles College library at Yale where, as an adolescent in an easy chair, reading William James and studying the Persian rug underfoot, his heart had opened to awe and wonder, to true discovery, a feeling echoing in him now. Were I DCI, I'd let imagination lead me, and be bound by nothing but the pragmatic. Twice as idealistic, twice as practical. My new motto. For Wild Bill Donovan, to destroy Hitler, any means were acceptable. When they have no choice, most folks obey the rules. When they can ignore the rules and get away with it, temptation arises, as do ethical questions. And when the rules are their own? Clearly, liberty walks hand-in-hand with confusion. Hitler's gone. The communists, too. CIA's momentum of method and attitude are now themselves the ends. The new objective? Break the grip on energy. Power to the People. Return central Intel to Donovan's time.
Focus on restoring S&T to what it was in the Dulles years, when they all lived by the DO DO tone set by the DO---- the Directorate of Operations.
Take the Company back where it was before romance and comaradarie fossilized into bureaucracy.
Backwards is forwards.
I can do it!
I can become DCI.
Indeed I can.
I will.
We stand on the threshold of the secret of power and the secret of life!
I can guide CIA across and through to their fulfillment.
He directed the Lincoln---- this warm dry capsule of luxury---- off the Beltway toward his neighborhood. And when my term as DCI is over, when I've contributed all I can, I'll retire, be with the family, write my book. The First Game. A novel beginning in 1887 at Morrie's when the first intercollegiate football match emerged from a challenge to a band of tipsy Harvard scholars issued by some euphoric beer-drinking sons of Yale. Sports are supposed to be fun. Like work-up baseball, where there's not even a score. Sports should be sport: loose, and honorable, and exciting. Play for joy, not for victory. Be fair-and-square. Respect the rules. Don't cheat. Be a good sport. And what do we have today? Sports morphed into business. Show biz. Big biz. The amateur, spontaneous, sporting dimension has shriveled away. Now it's all money and numbers and fraud. How many Orioles come from Baltimore? We should all mourn the loss of fun in sports; we should grieve for our children having changed from doing sports to watching them on TV.
The same has happened to CIA. As DCI, I'll fix it.
.
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