Bernard Beckett: Genesis

EXAMINER: Yes, Adam.

Anax was yet to meet anyone who could say the name without pausing at its significance. The new thinkers were revising his importance downward now. “There need be nothing special about the match that lights the fire,” was their motto, “save that it is the match that lights the fire.” But they too paused when they said his name.

EXAMINER: Anaximander, the first thing I need to hear is a little about Adam’s background. Who were his parents, what were his early years like? Everyone knows about the night on guard duty, every young one can tell us the story word for word, but Adam’s life didn’t begin on that night. Tell us how, in your view, he got there.

ANAXIMANDER: Adam was born in the year 2058. He was raised in the Tana nursery for the first year. Legend has it that his mother had devised a method of marking her baby and had herself transferred to his nursery so that she could watch over him during that time, but it is almost certainly just a story. The myth of causation again. For those who wish to understand what it was that made Adam the way he was, the answer “everything, and therefore nothing” does not rest easy.

What we do know is that Adam was born into the Philosopher class. At the end of his first year, he underwent the normal physiological testing and had his genome read. His learning status was confirmed but a warning was placed on his file. At least two genetic markers flagged a possible unpredictability in his behavior. In fact, the legendary Clark memorandum suggested that termination be considered. In normal circumstances he would have been submitted to retesting in two months’ time. But 2059 was the time of the second great plague scare, and when Clark died all her possessions were destroyed as a precaution, so the retesting order was never put on file. By the time the mistake was discovered, Adam had passed his first verbalization tests and termination was no longer a consideration. In the confusion surrounding Adam’s file, the warning markers were overlooked, and the information was never passed on to the schooling bodies.

EXAMINER: So he entered straight into the Philosophers’ stream?

ANAXIMANDER: Yes. The records tell us he was a top scholar who impressed immediately, particularly in mathematics and logic. He also excelled in wrestling and, at the age of thirteen, represented his city at the annual tournament. It was there we first note a display of the individuality that was to lead inevitably to his greatest role.

At the tournament he met a girl called Rebekah, a fellow wrestler, and he decided the two of them should be friends.

That they did not live in the same city or even on the same island did not deter him. On the last night of the tournament, Adam hid himself among Rebekahs teams luggage. He managed to travel seven hundred kilometers south of his allocated zone and, with Rebekahs help, avoid detection for three days before a cook discovered him hiding in the dry food store of Rebekahs commune.

Adam was returned home with a black mark against him and, it might be said, the pattern had been set. He had shown himself to be combative, impulsive, unafraid of censure, and drawn toward female company. Normally such a transgression would see a child transferred automatically to the laboring classes but his teacher made a special plea on Adam’s behalf, citing what she saw as his potential. As a concession he was transferred to an elite soldiering academy of the Republican Guards. And as a result of that decision, perhaps we can say history changed forever.

EXAMINER: If we were to believe in simple causes.

Again Anax was forced to blush at such a simple mistake. She had heard a rumor that no candidate was allowed more than two such errors. But then she had heard many rumors. This was no time for thinking such things. She had let herself become carried away by the story. Pericles had warned her this might happen. She resolved to temper her comments.

ANAXIMANDER: And of course we don’t. Sorry.

None of the Examiners acknowledged her apology. Anax wondered what it would take to draw some sort of response from them. Were they like this in their homes?

EXAMINER: Tell us about the circumstances of Adam’s arrest.

ANAXIMANDER: Adam was by this time seventeen years old. The year was 2075. He had graduated with distinction from the Soldiering academy where his love of physical activity continued.

You have asked me to move to the arrest, so I will only note in passing that by graduation he had accumulated four black marks on his training record, and it was for this reason that his first posting was to a watchtower on the southern coastline of the northern island. By this time, there were very few confirmed sightings of ghost ships, and it was not thought that there was any real danger of attempted refugee landings.

The real excitement was to the north where there had lately been three unconfirmed sightings of a new type of airship. Sentries had reported a blimplike object hanging low above the horizon near sunset, and although The Republic’s media were tightly controlled, rumors had spread quickly. As a precaution the top Soldiers were moved to the north, and laser gun and strike plane training intensified. Meanwhile Soldiers like Adam, fresh from school and with a compromised record, were left to man the remote watchtowers sprinkled along the southern coast.

Adam had been in his job for exactly seven months without incident. At his trial he reported being deeply bored by the experience, and it is likely this was no exaggeration.

The sentries worked in pairs and their routines were strictly prescribed and monitored. Each watchtower consisted of a small observation box perched atop a high metal frame, surrounded by electrified fencing and accessed by a single ladder.

The boxes themselves were small, with barely enough room for the two sentries to turn about. Their job was a simple one, to monitor the long unbroken line of the Great Sea Fence, a huge metal mesh fence set fifty meters out past the low tide mark. The fence climbed thirty meters above the ocean. It was topped with razor wire and guarded by small floating mines. Should anyone or anything be seen to be approaching the fence from the outside world, the sentries’ duty was unambiguous.

If it were a vessel of significant size, which was unlikely as most of those were dealt with by the roving satellite-guided mines of the outer defenses, the sentries were to raise the alarm. Within five minutes, laser-armed helicopters would be hovering over it, and any disease it might have carried would be evaporated.

For the smaller, more common vessels — which drifted toward the fence from time to time, usually with no more than two or three emaciated souls on board — the sentries’ task was more demanding. They were instructed to notify the station of the sighting, and then one of them would leave the watchtower and follow the path toward the firing post. There, a small-scale laser, armed with a random code memorized each morning by the sentry, would be used to obliterate the craft.

The second sentry would remain in the watchtower and was ordered to keep his gun trained on the back of the shooting sentry’s head. The instructions were uncompromising. Should the first sentry show any sign of hesitation in carrying out his duties, he was to be shot immediately, without recourse or investigation. In sentry circles it was well known that many a dispute between sentries was ended in this manner, and only the foolish argued with their watch partner.

EXAMINER: And what was the nature of the relationship between Adam and his sentry partner?

ANAXIMANDER: All conversations between sentries were monitored and recorded, and so we have some idea of the dynamic between Adam and his watchtower partner, Joseph. I should add, here, that the sentries were compelled to undertake a variety of computer prompted routines during their watch, in order to keep themselves alert. For instance, they might have to correct altered computer images against the scene ahead of them, or memorize and repeat elaborate computer generated prompts and instructions. I tell you this, because with your permission I would like to reproduce a conversation between Joseph and Adam, recorded the day before the initial incident.