"Use Pasco's mask," said Carl, wishing with all his heart that this stupid pantomime would stop. Soon, he thought, he would be willing Kid Zero to pull the trigger, just to get it over with.

Pasco, still unconscious, let loose a hollow groan.

"Bad dreams," commented the Kid.

"Yeah," said Carl dully. "He likes to play the horrorshows."

"I'd play them myself," said the Kid, "if I didn't have to live in one."

There was another sound then, which began as a throaty thrum but which grew very rapidly into a high-pitched whine. It sounded like some kind of an engine, but what it might be Carl didn't have a clue. To judge by the way the Kid looked up in feverish alarm, neither did he.

As the Kid came swiftly to his feet, Carl saw that something was zooming along the ridge of the hill, low and fast. It looked like a model airplane, but he knew that it had to be something far more sinister than that. In fact, he had a sudden irrational suspicion that this might the the miracle which he had told the Kid he needed.

He heard the Kid say: "What thea"?" before the explosion cut him off in mid-sentence.

There was just a brief interval after the explosion, when the one idea which possessed Carl's mind was an overwhelming urge to dive after the mask which he'd told the Kid to put on. He knew that if only he'd been able to keep his own on, he'd have been okaya"because what flooded out of the little guided missile as its tiny warhead exploded was some kind of narcotic gas, which was very, very powerfula.

Part Three.

Kid Zero in Wonderland.

1.

You're walking in that Garden of Eden which oncea"very briefly, from the viewpoint of Ecological Timea"was North America.

Here again is the trackless forest which decked the mountain-slopes for hundreds of thousands of years before men came out of Asia, across that unfortunate land-bridge which the swelling of the oceans belatedly drowned with the Bering Straits.

Here again is the great plain which was the land of the bison for hundreds of thousands of years before the first repeating rifles became the instruments of their slaughter.

Here again are the life-filled rivers which were the bloodstream of the continent for hundreds of thousands of years before the first cities were built upon their banks, in order to fatten them with the wastes and excrements of civilization.

Once, very briefly, these slopes were denuded of trees, when the timber was stripped away to feed the world's hunger for paper: paper on which to write lies; paper in which to wrap the holy objects of worshipful trade.

Once, very briefly, these great plains became deserts, when the soil was murdered by slow and tortuous degrees: first exhausted by the intensive cultivation of monocultured crops; then sustained for a while by exotic medication; finally abandoned to rot into red dust and yellow ash and blanched bone.

Once, very briefly, these rivers were fountains of poison, when factories had been raised beside them to destroy them by lethal injection, in the name of cleanliness; for whatever men could not tolerate about themselves they washed away and gave to the earth, so that it might be spoiled while they were saved.

But in the end, men could not be saved, and the earth could not be spoiled; the empire of men came rapidly to its inevitable decline and fall, and the scars which it left upon the face of the earth soon faded and were gone.

You don't know how much time has pa.s.sed, but you know that it would be futile to ask. A great deal of time, in terms of human minutes and hours and histories; only the briefest of intervals, in terms of the evolution of species and the languorous changing of Gaea's great seasons. Ice Ages have come and gone; the glaciers have scoured clean the continent which once was turned into that running sore which men called the United States of America; normality is restored.

If men survive at all they live as hunter-gatherers upon the plains and in the forests; they do not plant crops and they do not herd cattle. Perhaps, if men do survive, those twin sicknesses of civilizationa"agriculture and animal husbandrya"will come again to plague them and sow the seeds of fiery destruction; but if they do, the course of theepidemic will again be brief. The sins of men extend from one generation to another, but not forever; their heritage spoils five hundred lifetimes, each one worse than the last, but in the end men are called to account for those sins, which are cancelled out by a Day of Judgement, and Eden is restored.

You're walking now in the forest, naked and unafraid. You have no purpose save to be there, and to be a part of Eden.

You're not hungry and you're not thirsty, nor can you hunger or thirst while the forest has fruit and the streams run pure.

It's not the excitement of the hunt that you crave while you walk here now, but the peace of solitude: that calmness of mind which is the reflection of the forest's great and quiet being in your own small and patient mind.

Although the sun is hidden by the forest canopy you don't feel cold, because your skin hasn't lost its adaptability of comfort by virtue of having been swathed in clothing. Just as your sight is keen, because you have not been born into a lightless world, so also your body is strong, because circ.u.mstance has prevented the cultivation of that special innocence, tenderness and vulnerability which is the legacy of civilization. You're a whole man, not a cripple made by swaddling and coddling.

There is no trace in your heart of envy or avarice or sloth or wrath or pride or gluttony or l.u.s.t. In a world without inequality, envy is impossible; in a world without property, avarice is impossible; in a world without labour, sloth is impossible; in a world without frustration, wrath is impossible; in a world without status, pride is impossible; in a world without anxiety, gluttony is impossible; in a world without marriage, l.u.s.t is impossible. In Eden, there is no inequality; no property; no labour; no frustration; no status; no anxiety; and no marriage. If there are men here, they are free of sin; they have not eaten from that deadly tree of technical knowledge which would urge them to plant and to keep, to cultivate and to own, to build and to destroy.

(But are there men here at all, if you must always think in terms of ifs? And if there are not, who are you? Who are you?) You don't know who you are; in Eden there are no names. You were conceived and birthed, but you have no mother; your creation was initiated in a human womb, but you have no father. In your turn, you too will be a creator, but you will know no sons or daughters. You will lovea"most certainly you will lovea"but your love will not be bound and confined, restricted by rule or bond of obligation. You will love as freely as you live.

(But who will you most certainly love, if you don't even know whether there are men here at all? How were you sp.a.w.ned and birthed, if there are none here like yourself? Or are you not a man at all? Are you an echo or a ghost? Are you an angel or a G.o.d? Are you only a dreamer?) You're trying to remembera"and you find, to your astonishment, that it hurts.

It hurts when you catch your finger on a thorn; it hurts when you trip and bruise your knee; it hurts when you run too hard and too far; it hurts when you stare into the sunabut this is not that kind of hurt. Maybe memory too is a kind of disease, a kind of sin. Maybe, if there arc men here, they have no memoriesa.

As well suppose that the men of Eden have feathers and wings, or that their womenfolk have eyes in their nipples, or that they are giants as tall and strong as ancient trees.

(But why not? Why not? Why should men not be what they desire to be? Why teach the man when you might teach the superman? Why create out of virgin clay such a shabby, brutal, paradoxical being as a man, when you might make a glorious embodiment of beauty, grace and reason?

Why?) To the burden of trying to remember is added the extra burden of trying to think. Dissent is easy, thought is hard; renunciation is the cheapest form of virtue; to wish the world away is the easiest way of coping with it; to make a myth of the womb is to deny the legacy of birth; every Golden Age is blind and stupida.

(Why are the proverbs of h.e.l.l lurking beneath the surface of the vision of Eden? What is this poison which pollutes my dream?

My dream?) You've done it now. You've said a forbidden word, and it will all be taken away from you. You've lost it all, and it serves you right. You've broken it, and it can't be mended. You had your chance.

You had your chance, but you said a forbidden word. (Or thought it. What difference does it make?) The forbidden word was "my", because "my" implies "me" and "me" implies "I" and "I" implies "am", all of which are forbidden.

You've murdered the world.

You've murdered Eden.

Are you proud of yourself?

Two pairs of hands helped the Kid out of the sensurround booth. He was completely disoriented, and for a moment or two he couldn't bring his vision into focus. He was lost in a maze of returning sensations, whose chaotic jumble would not be resolved.

Hearing came back before sight, and he heard the man speaking before he saw him.

"It is strange," said the voice, "that even when one gives a man a chance to be a G.o.d, he remains stubborn in his resolve to be a man. The dream will not take holda"it simply is not allowed to displace reality. I wish I knew whether to consider this a hopeful sign or not; it is not what we expected. Perhaps the simulation of experience is still not good enough; perhaps it has not quite reached that threshold of essential plausibility which will allow the brain to adapt to it wholeheartedly."

Sight came back, and Kid Zero saw the face of the man who was speaking to him. He was a small man, old but graceful in the manner of his aging, Oriental in the cast of his features. He was dressed in a fashion which seemed to the Kid to be both exotic and antiquated, like something out of an old samurai movie.

When the Kid had taken in the sight of the man he turned to look at what was behind him. He ignored the two girls who had helped him out of it.

"A horrorshow booth," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "I was in a horrorshow booth."

"In a manner of speaking, yes," admitted the small man. "That is how we have marketed the most primitive versions of the sensurrounda"as devices of entertainment. They seem so innocent in such a guise, do they not? All the more innocent, of course, because they pretend to be terrifying. There is nothing which make us feel more secure, more unthreatened, than something which reduces fear itself to a cheap and manageable thrill. That is why children love toys made in the image of carnivorous beasts or instruments of ma.s.s destruction. If a man makes something which can truly change the worlda"which might alter the whole nature of human lifea"he must first make a toy of it, or else he will be destroyed by those whose world he tries to change. Metals were first worked in order to make jewellery, paper was first used to make lanterns, gunpowder to make fireworksawe do not even know their inventors' names, which is an infallible sign of the fact that they lived happy and undistinguished lives. There is nothing quite as lethal as fame, Zero-san, as you have recently discovered. It is my most devout hope that I will never be famous."

"Who are you?" asked the Kid helplessly, while he looked around for clues as to where they might be. The room had no windows; it looked like a storeroom. There were no beds, tables chairs, desks, TV sets or computer consoles; there were only horrorshow boothsa"four of them.

"My name is Sasumu Yokoi, Zero-san," the old man answered, with a slight bow. "I am one of many labourers whose task it is to carry forward the development of devices such as the one in which you were confined. I must apologize for my littleaexperiment. Curiosity is a congenital disease of all scientists, and we have only recently begun to explore he true potential of this technology. Almost all of our subjects go consciously into their dreamsa"I could not resist the opportunity to record the experiences of one who could not know where he was."

The Kid felt weak at the knees, but there was nowhere to sit down. "Curiosity?" he queried, almost absent-mindedly. "Record? You can record my dreams?"

"Not exactly," Yokoi replied. "But this is a more advanced model of the sensurround than any you might encounter in an American amus.e.m.e.nt arcade. The cruder models are built only for one-way transmission, introducing information into the brain via the sensorium. This one can carry information either way; it is built for feedback, so that you maya"with elaborate a.s.sistance from the machine's own intelligencea"create and orchestrate your own illusion. It is most interesting to see what people do when they have that opportunity. Our people in America had to place you in the booth anyhow, in order to smuggle you out of the country, and the opportunity was too good to miss. I must apologize again."

The Kid shivered, though it wasn't cold inside the room. His weakness didn't seem to be abatinga"if anything, he was feeling worse.

"You were eavesdropping on my dream?" he said, squinting with the effort of maintaining his concentration. "A dream I was creating for myself?" One of the two girls who had helped him out of the booth had moved back to his side, and now she reached out to steady him. Yokoi signalled to her with his hand, and she began to lead the Kid towards the door. Yokoi kept pace with them, answering the question while they walked.

"You must not misunderstand," he said. "The machine cannot read mindsa"it cannot tell us what a man is dreaming while he is asleep. While you remained unconscious, the machine was impotent. But what you experienced just now was not a dream or a daydream. It was a sensurround simulation, like a horrorshow tape, but it was a malleable experience, over which you had a certain power of control. There is nothing supernatural about the way such control is exerciseda"it is astonishing how rapidly the brain learns, without any conscious intervention at all, how to emit the signals which intervene with the machine's programming. It is almost as if the ability has always been latent in the human brain, dormantly awaiting the day when the sensurround would be invented. It is very remarkable, Zero-san, very remarkable indeed. But even so, all that we could put on tapea"all that we could share of your waking dreama"was a sequence of sounds and pictures. Your private thoughts remain inviolate."

By now they had come through a short stretch of corridor to the threshold of a different kind of room. It was an office of sorts, with computer screens and keyboards, but it had no chairs. Instead it had a thickly-cushioned carpet on which one might squat in order to use the machines. Yokoi removed his shoes before entering. The Kid had bare feet alreadya"all he was wearing was a light robe which the girls had presumably put on him when they brought him out of the sensurround.

The girl unrolled a kind of huge cushion, and helped the Kid to lower himself on to it. Once there, supported on one elbow, he felt a lot better.

"Tea," said Yokoi to the girl, abruptly. She boweda"far more deeply than Yokoi had bowed to Kid Zero, and left the room.

The Kid's thoughts were just beginning to catch up with him, now that he didn't feel quite so bad.

"You smuggled me out of America?" he asked, not quite able to believe what he had heard.

"Certainly," said Yokoi, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "There was no safety for you within its borders. GenTech is powerful everywhere, including my own homeland, but it is most powerful of all in America."

"Where are we now, then?" asked the Kid, not entirely convinced that he wasn't being fed a pack of lies.

"Antarctica," Yokoi informed him lightly.

Oddly enough, the absurdity of it made it more believable. If Yokoi had been lying, he'd never have expected the Kid to swallow a whopper like that.

"I've never been south of Brownsville," said the Kida"and then, just to show that he still had some of his wits about him, he said: "This is Mitsu-Makema's doing, isn't it?" The Kid knew that horrorshows were M-M products, and only a corp of that size would have the organization or the motivation to s.n.a.t.c.h him out of the jaws of GenTech's trap.

"I have the honour to serve Mitsu-Makema," Yokoi confirmed. "I hope that you too will soon have that honour."

The Kid made no immediate response to the job offer. His mind was on other matters.

"Did you leave Lady Venom behind?" he said, in response to a sudden pang of anxiety.

"Indeed not," answered Yokoi. "Our agents are very efficient. They were careful to leave nothing behind to indicate what might have become of you."

The Kid blinked at the implications of that. "They brought Pasco and the mercy boy along too?" he queried.

"Mr Pasco and Mr Preston are herea"they must be awakened soon, for the sake of their health, but they will be securely imprisoned. In the meantime, we are conducting some experiments of the same kind as the one in which you have recently partic.i.p.ated. Mr Pasco is a very interesting subjecta"he obviously has an extensive knowledge of horrorshow tapes. I fear that we must take careful precautions with respect to the rattlesnake, Zero-san. I must apologize."

The Kid had noticed that Yokoi did a lot of apologizing. He had also noticed that the politeness didn't extend as far as not doing the things for which he would later have to apologize.

The girl returned, bearing a tray. There was tea, but no biscuits.

"I don't have the disc," said the Kid, while he watched Yokoi pour. He wondered why the liquid looked so pale and anemic. "But I guess you know that," he added.

"We know that you hid one copy," said Yokoi evenly. "We know also that two others were recovered by GenTech, and that the fourth was given by you to Enrico Andriano. Andriano escaped, by the way. The vehicles which were sent by his friends to Melendez were decoysa"he made his way on foot to a more distant point of rendezvous. His masters now have the disc in their secure possessiona"I do not know whether they will succeed in unlocking the data without triggering its destruction, but I think they might."

"Do you know who those masters are?" asked the Kid, sipping the hot tea from his cup. He didn't like the taste much, but he liked the feeling of it sliding down his throat.

"Oh yes," said Yokoi, but did not elaborate.

"And you want me to tell you where I hid the fourth copy, so you can have a crack at it yourselves?"

"Certainly," said the old man, who was sipping his own tea in a seemingly reverent fashion. "But there is no hurrya"no hurry at all."

That, after all that he'd been through, seemed the greatest absurdity of all. Kid Zero couldn't help but laugha"and though he didn't like the way his laughter sounded any more than he liked the taste of Dr Yokoi's tea, he loved the way it fell in his guts

2.

There was nothing to be seen from the viewing-tower but mountains of ice overlaid by snow. There were no buildings, no chimneys, no oil-rigs, and no penguins. The sky was an even shade of grey, lightened in the north by the light of an invisible, low-lying sun.

"When you can see that mountain top over there," said Junichi Tanagawa. pointing to the highest of the ice-peaks, "it means that it will snow very soon."

The Kid fell for it. "And what if you can't?" he asked.

"Then it's snowing already." The j.a.panese didn't bother to laugh at his own jokea"not, at least, with his mouth; it was impossible to figure out what his wrinkle-surrounded eyes were doing.

Tanagawa was even older than Yokoi. He was far more wizened and far more westernized. He wore a very severe grey business-suit and a neat blue tie, and he sat in a leather-clad reclining-chair, behind a beautifully-polished desk. Kid Zero had often heard the expression "boardroom suits", but it had been meaningless noise until now. Now he knew what a director of a multinational corp actually looked likea"one such director of one such corp, anyhow. He couldn't help but feel flattered to be in the same room as a man like Tanagawa; that the room was in a secret establishment less than forty miles from the south pole and that Tanagawa was being nice to him added further dimensions to his sense of privilegea"and to his awkward suspicion that it was all too good to last.

He'd been given a nice room with a private can and a showera"not to mention a PC he didn't know how to use and a TV set which didn't seem capable of tuning in ZBCa"and the three meals he had eaten there since the previous evening had all seemed to his untutored palate like ambrosia washed down with nectar. He'd tried hard not to let his enjoyment of it all be spoiled by the suspicion that someone would eventually turn up with the bill, but he hadn't quite succeeded.

"Of course," said Tanagawa, in a regretful tone which sounded honest, "the time may soon come when the peak will no longer be there, and we will have to change the saying to refer to rain. Sixty per cent of the ice-cap has already melted into the sea. This is the last of the world's unspoiled wildernesses, Mr Zero. Dr Yokoi tells me that you have a certain affinity with the idea of unspoiled wilderness."

"This is a little too wild for me," said the Kid, coming away from the viewport in order to take a seat opposite his host. "Forests are more my style. This is more like the Great Western Deserta"peace bought with hostility. Isn't the Antarctic Argentinian territory?"

"Not all of it, by any means. The Argentinians have expanded from their Weddell Sea bases to annexe the old Queen Maud Land and the Victoria Land Coast, but this particular spot is still technically part of the Australian Territories, and it is too far into the ice sheet to interest even the hardiest of Latin American adventurers. Not that it would matter if this were Argentinian territory, of coursea"Mitsu-Makema has an interest in the affairs of every nation on earth."

It was all Greek to the Kid, whose knowledge of geography was rather limited, but he wasn't about to admit as much. "Why build an installation way out here?" he asked, trying to put on a show of being clever. "The heating bills must be pretty high."

"Social responsibility," said Tanagawa mildly. "All the corporations conduct scientific research of a potentially hazardous nature, and all of them locate their most sensitive establishments in places where the environment is relatively hostile to life. That is why GenTech has recently taken to locating the establishments responsible for its most adventurous biotechnological research in the North American desert and the high Andes. Chromicon has similar stations in the Sahara and Siberia; we have others in the Australian outback. We are particularly proud of this establishmenta"and the problem of heating it is not so very awkward. Our nuclear reactor is readily supplied with fuel by local uranium, and ice is a very efficient insulator."

"This is where your BioDiv does its hairiest work, then? And where Dr Yokoi and his friends are trying to upgrade horrorshow booths into fully-fledged dream-machines."

"Dr Yokoi is a visionary," said Tanagawa smoothly. "We are very proud of hima"as proud as GenTech are of the legendary Dr Zarathustra. We are realists, and must admit that GenTech are our superiors, for the moment, in advanced biotechnological researcha"but we feel that this disadvantage is compensated by our superiority in cybernetics and its a.s.sociated technologies."