“Charming people,” Waxhill agreed.
They smiled at each other.
Clocker served himself more sausages, and Oslett wanted to knock that
stupid hat off his head.
“If there’s any chance that our boy has extraordinary powers, however
feeble, which we never intended to give him,” Waxhill said, “then we
must consider the possibility that some qualities we did intend to give
him didn’t turn out quite as we thought they did.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” Oslett said.
“Essentially, I’m talking about sex.”
Oslett was surprised. “He has no interest in it.”
“We’re sure of that, are we?”
“He’s apparently male, of course, but he’s impotent.”
Waxhill said nothing.
“He was engineered to be impotent,” Oslett stressed.
“A man can be impotent yet have a keen interest in sex. Indeed, one
might make a good argument for the case that his very inability to
attain an erection frustrates him, and that his frustration leads him to
be obsessed with sex, with what he cannot have.”
Oslett had been shaking his head the entire time Waxhill had been
speaking. “No. Again, it’s not that simple. He’s not only impotent
He’s received hundreds of hours of intense psychological conditioning to
eliminate sexual interest, some of it when he’s been in deep hypnosis,
some under the influence of drugs that make the sub conscious
susceptible to any suggestion, some through virtual-reality subliminal
feeds during sedative-induced sleep. To this boy, the primary
difference between men and women is the way they dress.”
Unimpressed with Oslett’s argument, spreading orange marmalade on a
slice of toast, Waxhill said, “Brainwashing, even at its most
sophisticated, can fail. Would you agree with that?”
“Yes, but with an ordinary subject, you have problems because you’ve got
to counter a lifetime of experience to install a new attitude or false
memory. But Alfie was different. He was a blank slate, a beautiful
blank slate, so there wasn’t any resistance to whatever attitudes,
memories, or feelings we wanted to stuff in his nice empty head.
There was nothing in his brain to wash out first.”
“Maybe mind-control failed with Alfie precisely because we were so
confident that he was an easy mark.”
“The mind is its own control,” Clocker said.
Waxhill gave him an odd look.
“I don’t think it failed,” Oslett insisted. “Anyway, there’s still the
little matter of his engineered impotence to get around.”
Waxhill took time to chew and swallow a bite of toast, and then washed
it down with coffee. “Maybe his body got around it for him.”
“Say again?”
“His incredible body with its superhuman recuperative powers.” i Oslett
twitched as if the idea had pierced like a pin. “Wait a | minute, now.
His wounds heal exceptionally fast, yes. Punctures, gashes, broken
bones. Once damaged, his body can restore itself to its original
engineered condition in miraculously short order. But that’s the key.
To its original engineered condition. It can’t start to remake itself
on any fundamental level, can’t mutate, for God’s sake.”
“We’re sure of that, are we?”
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“Well . . . because . . . otherwise . . . it’s unthinkable.”
“Imagine,” Waxhill said, “if Alfie is potent. And interested in sex.
The boy’s been engineered to have a tremendous potential for violence, a
biological killing machine, without compunctions or remorse, capable of
any savagery. Imagine that bestiality coupled with a sex drive, and
consider how sexual compulsions and violent impulses can feed on each
other and amplify each other when they’re not tempered by a civilized
and moral spirit.”
Oslett pushed his plate aside. The sight of food was beginning to
sicken him. “It has been considered. That’s why so damned many
precautions were taken.”
“As with the Hindenburg.” As with the Titanic, Oslett thought grimly.
Waxhill pushed his plate aside, too, and folded his hands around his
coffee cup. “So now Alfie has found Stillwater, and he wants the
writer’s family. He’s a complete man now, at least physically, and
thoughts of sex lead eventually to thoughts of procreation. A wife.
Children. God knows what strange, twisted understanding he has of the
meaning and purpose of a family. But here’s a ready-made family.
He wants it. Wants it badly. Evidently he feels it belongs to him.”
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195