Nick was thinking of other things. He and Gordy Rolfe had formed their alliance because they needed each other to achieve a common goal: a world crippled by a space shield that would be only partially effective in deflecting the coming particle storm. The weak and the foolish would die, but Nick had his own personal hideaways dug deep beneath New Rio and the mountains of the Canadian Rockies. He did not begrudge Gordy Rolfe his secret headquarters. And beyond the particle storm lay the real goal, of ultimate personal power unimagined by most humans.
But the alliance carried its own price. Rolfe now held the stronger position. It was in part the power of a man indifferent to public opinion and support, versus one like Nick, who occupied a public and highly visible position.
There was also another, more important, difference between them. If you want to understand a man, find out what he does for recreation. Nick pursued men and women as well as power. Gordy was above — or below — the passions of the flesh. Gordy played God, and he was, in Nick’s opinion, becoming steadily more deranged. The lack of personal ties decreased his vulnerability and increased his megalomania.
“Did you hear me, Lopez?” Rolfe came closer, into the more brightly lit area beyond the holograph display.
“Do you know what happens when I seed the habitat with a variety of forms, dinosaurs and mammals, and let it run?”
“No. What happens?” Nick’s skin prickled with apprehension. The circular wall of the room seemed closer. He imagined he could smell a rank odor from the jungle beyond.
“The end mix of species in the habitat is different each time, depending on starting conditions and on random variations in food supply and weather.” Rolfe moved to stand next to where Nick was sitting. His head was level with Nick’s and he leaned close, gray eyes glittering with excitement behind the big lenses. “Sometimes the dinosaurs seem to have the upper hand, sometimes the mammals win out. But in every case, the small mammals do well. They never become extinct, and they always increase in numbers. Do you hear me, Lopez? Not big mammals. Small mammals win out, every time.”
Nick was six feet five inches tall. Presumably he did not qualify as a small mammal. Rolfe, stretched up to his full height in elevator shoes, was perhaps five feet two. Yet he was talking down to Nick — and loving it.
Nick nodded. “I take your point. That’s very interesting.”
There was one particular small mammal that he would like to see extinct. Not yet, though. This was a necessary partnership. He and Gordy Rolfe needed what only the other could provide: technological wizardry and industrial power from Gordy and the Argos Group, political savvy and clout from Nick and the WPF. The world’s greatest inventor and entrepreneur, teamed with the world’s savviest politician: a marriage made in heaven.
But in the long run? That was different. Nick knew very well that he and Gordy were two people as different as you could get, drawn together only by a shared desire for power and wealth. Somewhere in the undefined future, on an Earth ravaged by the particle storm, only one of the two would survive.
The competition between small and large mammals had yet to be decided.
10
From the private diary of Oliver Guest.
I am not one to derogate the efforts of others, but Seth Parsigian’s “solution” to my problems of acrophobia and agoraphobia was at first sight absurd beyond words.
“You imagine,” I said to him, “that I will sit here in the castle, while you and your associates wander Sky City and send me such facts and scenes as your Baker Street Irregulars deem important; and that I will then, like some improbable Mycroft, sit in my armchair and deduce from those rags and tatters of information the identity of the killer. Your faith in my powers would be touching, were it not so improbable.”
He scowled at me out of the screen; one-way video, of course, since I permit no outgoing images from Otranto Castle. Seth was annoyed with me, and not without reason. If it be true that there is an appropriate era and place for every person, then Seth Parsigian would have fitted well into the Victorian London of Sherlock Holmes to which I had just made reference. He was not, of course, a model for the most famous midnight wanderer of those fog-shrouded streets. I myself, in many people’s minds, form a far better match for Whitechapel Jack. Seth, however, had well-developed powers of observation and self-preservation that made him far more than a casual onlooker. What he would see and report from Sky City would doubtless be useful and probably necessary.
It would not, however, be sufficient. Three days of hard effort on my part had brought me no closer to our murderer. The crucial touching of like minds that Seth had hoped for when he came to see me had not occurred, and it seemed clear that progress through that avenue was unlikely.
I had no other suggestions; Seth, however, did.
“You got it wrong,” he said. “Nobody but me’s gonna be involved with you in this. An’ I’m not gonna do all the work wanderin’ round Sky City while you sit there laughin’ an’ scratchin’. You’ll be right there with me.”
“Impossible. I thought I had made it abundantly clear-”
“Be there as much as you want, an’ as much as you can stand. An’ still be safe at home if it gets too sticky. See this?” He held up a shapeless bundle of mauve and pink. “I’ll wear it. Opens up to look like an ordinary jacket, but it’s an RV jacket-for remote viewin’, it’s got sensors all over it. I send you the receivin’ equipment, audio and video feeds in an RV helmet; then anythin’ I see, you see. Anythin’ I hear, you hear. Realistic, just like bein’ there in person.”
“If realism is your goal, I suspect that I will be unable to function. Full telepresence is no more tolerable to me than physical presence.”
Seth offered a grin of irritating condescension. “You’ll be fine, Doc. I’ll arrange it so you get your place overlaid on the Sky City scene. You control the mix, how much you see of what I’m seein’, how much you get of where you are. If things are tough for you to take, no problem. You just tone it down for a while.”
“But where you go is as important as what you see. Suppose you visit locations in Sky City that I believe to be of no more value than random wanderings?”
“Won’t happen. You’ll have contact with me. Don’t sit there scowlin’.” How did he know my expression when I was feeding to him a voice-only signal? “We do it the same way we’re doin’ it now. I don’t need to see your mug-in fact, I’d just as soon not-but you can talk to me and steer me anyplace you think I need to go.”
The probability that the scheme would succeed seemed vanishingly small. The chance that Seth would drop his idea without trying it was, unfortunately, even less.
As James Russell Lowell remarks, it is no good arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
“Very well,” I said. “If you think the matter is worth the effort, send me the receiving equipment. Before we try it in practice there must be a test to see if the idea is workable.”
I broke the connection, and pondered the problem of metaphorical outer garments.
The round-trip signal travel time from Earth to Sky City in its geosynchronous orbit is about one-fourth of a second. Seth proposed to accommodate this in Earth-bound tests of our communication system via a built-in electronic delay. It was similar to that employed when the question was first raised of customer acceptance of signals sent through geosynchronous satellites, and although I had not seen details of those century-old experiments I had little doubt that we would rapidly make the necessary mental adjustment. Far more difficult was the question of my environment. Unlike Seth, who would operate wholly in Sky City, I would perforce be obliged to function in Otranto Castle, while at the same time following events several tens of thousands of kilometers away. I needed to provide a test under difficult local circumstances.