Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

In the empty theater, General Adam Taggart’s amplified voice sounded from speakers.

“What you will witness,” Taggart had explained to the delegates, “is an experiment in controlled human behavior, disciplines based on scientific conclusions. I stress,” the general’s voice now rumbled through Summitt City’s empty screening room, “that these disciplines are an application of observed scientific principles. Nothing you will see was invented or discovered. A thief doesn’t discover the silverware in a home. Gravity, motion and light weren’t invented or discovered, they’ve existed forever. Men of curiosity and learning have come to understand and put to use their relationships and functions. Progress is usually a matter of replacing one error with another, if you will, but progress is inevitable. Whatever exists on this earth, no matter how cunningly nature has hidden it, will be found and understood and put to use by man, for good or ill, it doesn’t matter one goddamn.”

The streaming flag dissolved into a montage of fresh images. Cameras picked up the baseball game, cutting from batter to pitcher to infielder. Adult spectators lined the diamond, cheering and clapping. The scene dissolved to the lake shore, where a swarm of starlings settled with a rush of wings into tawny trees. A medley of pop tunes sounded distantly from the arcade. Children skipped beside their mothers, a black woman, slim in tailored jeans, bought a snow cone for her daughter.

Simon Correll opened his briefcase and picked up the weighted globe that contained the Snow Virgin. Tipping it sideways, he watched the flakes swirling about the Madonna.

On the screen, the cameras had panned back to the action at the baseball game. The pitcher kicked high, let the ball fly. The umpire’s hand shot up.

“Strike one.”

The batter checked the third base coach, a middle-aged Puerto Rican whose sunglasses had broad, milk-white rims. The coach signaled to his infielders by touching the peak of his cap, kicking the dirt and clapping his hands. The shortstop yelled, “Bunt! Watch for a bunt!”

The first baseman, a black youngster, crept down the line like a cat, eyes fixed on the crouched batter. Spencer Barrow. His brother was named Dookey, Correll remembered. Summitt’s laboratory mice. It was such concepts that had appalled Jennifer. Human lab mice were a reality she couldn’t absorb or come to terms with. They were from Chicago, the Barrow brothers, products of ghettos, juvenile detention halls, foster homes, their records “lost,” their family’s whereabouts unknown and virtually untraceable. Brought to Summitt to visit with an “aunt”...

A phone in the control panel rang. It was Quade, calling from Memphis. “I’ve talked with the stewardess on Flight 10 from Philadelphia, Mr. Correll.” Quade’s voice was light, a surprising contrast to his wide, thick body. “She’s staying at a motel near the airport. Unfortunately she maintains that company policy prohibits any discussion of passengers by flight crews. But I’ll try to make her understand that an exception is necessary — excuse me a moment, sir...”

As Correll held the open phone, General Taggart’s voice sounded around him from the speakers. “Dr. Einstein, near his death, told us nuclear power had changed everything but the way people think. But modifying how people think, well, naturally that’s permitted only in authorized churches and legislatures.”

The camera picked up golfers on a green, children exercising in groups to the beat of drums. General Taggart went on. “It’s an untested article of faith that human nature can’t be changed. Attempts to modify the only thinking element in nature are considered useless. Instead we’ve tried to change the machine that transports us through space. We break open mountains, turn rivers and lakes to hardpan, but nature can’t be changed. We’ve got to change the basic responses of the humans living on nature’s machine. That is the function of Ancilia Four . Some of you may have feelings of outrage about this film. If so, then you don’t understand what we’ve achieved. We are demonstrating to you the indifference of a treated, controlled population to the spectacle of both youth and minorities being brutalized. To prove that those two traditional weaknesses in the average human psyche have been chemically anesthetized. Because laudable as it has been made to seem, in fact, aiding the underdog screws up nature’s plan for survival of the fittest . Chivalry is an infection. We’ve found the antidote for it. The participants in our Ancilia program have no compulsion to become personally and emotionally involved in the inevitable misfortunes and tragedies of life. Live and let live applies only to themselves, the people who count .

“Our treatment turns the stuff of horror into the stuff of dreams—”

Correll turned down the sound, the images on the screen flowed in silence. Quade was speaking again. “Harry Selby got off the plane in Philadelphia, sir. He told the stewardess that he had to make a phone call, but specifically asked her not to page him if he didn’t return. They took off without him.”

“You believe she’s telling the truth?”

“Miss Avery is doing her best to cooperate with us, sir. I think she’s told me everything she knows.”

“Have you checked charter flights, Quade?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve made inquiries of the unscheduled carriers operating out of Philadelphia. I’ve been in touch with private airfields in the Memphis area. It’s extremely unlikely that Selby left Philadelphia.”

“You’d better take the next flight back to New York, Quade. If you don’t hear otherwise from me, have my jet on stand-by at LaGuardia with a direct clearance for Brussels.”

Correll broke the connection and froze the frame on the screen. The flag was locked into rippled immobility, golfers were caught in mid-swing, the shining hair of pretty girls blew out stiff and straight with the gusting winds.

The rear doors of the theater opened and Sergeant Ledge joined Correll, his boots noiseless on the thick carpets, the strong light glazing his sharply cut features.

“I’m telling you straight out. I monitored your call on my car phone,” he told Correll. His smile was tight and ugly. “I like to know what’s going on. That’s how I’ve stayed alive this long.” He had dropped the “sirs.” “We’ve been fucked over good.” Ledge nodded to the projector. “Lee Crowley loaded that film. He checked it out of the lab. Then he left the pass for Selby. In Philadelphia they made a point to let us find out Selby was on his way. Crowley’s gone, his apartment’s cleaned out. Every move they made was to pin us down here. Who sold us out, Correll? You figured that one yet?”

Correll had been nodding thoughtfully. “Not all of it, Sergeant. Not quite.”

With an unhurried move, Ledge drew the .45 from its holster and held it leveled at Correll’s chest. “Step back from that projector.”

“You’re right, of course,” Correll said. “We were set up. But I’d advise you to trust me now—”

Ledge gestured with the automatic. Correll shrugged and stepped aside. The sergeant moved to the control panel and pressed a button to activate the film. The images flowed again, the boats on the lake, the playing fields and brightly striped buses.

“I soldiered with George Thomson,” he said, as if mechanically repeating a litany. “The best time of my life, soldiering with the major in Korea. I shot and killed Jonas Selby. I always hated that stubborn bastard. Thomson watched me. We trusted each other. We were soldiers. We doped Jarrell Selby and got him on the plane back here like we’d been told, good soldiers taking orders.”