Ian Watson - Converts

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Converts

Ian Watson

An [e - reads ] Book

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or

mechanical, including photocopy, recording, scanning or any information storage retrieval system,

without explicit permission in writing from the Author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's

imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or

dead, is entirely coincidental.

First e-reads publication 1999

www.e-reads.com

ISBN 0-7592-0743-7

Author Biography

Born in England in 1943, Ian Watson’s first novel The Embedding appeared in 1973, placing second in

the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and winning the French Prix Apollo, establishing Watson’s

themes of communication and consciousness, altered perceptions, the evolution of mind, and the nature of

alien intelligence (including whales and dolphins). Alchemy, perfumery, costume, cosmology, cake

decoration, the history of lighting, the Renaissance art of memory - all is grist for his thirty-odd novels

and hundred and fifty or so stories. Brought up in 1950s in Tyneside, he read extensively, daydreamed,

and grew cacti because they seemed like the vegetation of an alien planet. He received a degree in English

at Oxford, then lectured in East Africa and Tokyo. Africa awakened him politically to the Third World.

Japan zapped him with Future Shock. In the late 80s he went through a horror phase, culminating in The

Fire Worm (1988), a novel developed from a story (“Jingling Geordie’s Hole”) which Interzone readers

simultaneously voted the best and worst story of the year. He subsequently published Books of Mana

consisting of Lucky’s Harvest (1993) and The Fallen Moon (1994) inspired by Finnish mythology, and

the sf technothrillers Hard Questions (1996) and Oracle (1997).

Other works by Ian Watson also available in e-reads editions

The Fire Worm

To John, Greta, and Anna Power

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Author’s Note

Parts of this novel appeared in different form as a story “Jean Sandwich, the Sponsor and I” inUniverse

11 edited by Terry Carr.

Contents

Part One: Geneva

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part Two: Argus

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Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Part Three: Thelma

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Part Four: Robina

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

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Chapter 31

Part Five:Perhaps a Year Later

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

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PART ONE

Geneva

Chapter 1

‘Jean Sandwich?’

Frank Caldero struck a casual pose in front of the surveillance camera. Mounted over the elevator door,

this was the only camera in the whole lobby. Nor was this the only shortcoming about the security system

of Paradise Apartments. A big black mark must equally be awarded to the tangle of Swiss Cheese plants

choking one wall. Doubtless, these plants helped to maintain the pretence of Paradise; but any human

snake could lurk in ambush there.

These minor observations merely served to confirm what Frank already knew in some detail about the

economic status of the woman he was visiting. She was on the borderline, between Eden and the jungle.

‘Jean Sandwich? Jean Sandra Norwich?’

‘Yes, who is that?’

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The intercom box made the woman’s voice blurred and crackly: defect number three.

‘My name’s Frank Caldero, Miz Sandwich.’ He produced the bundle of money from his inside pocket and

flourished the banknotes at the camera, fanning them. ‘As you can see, I don’t intend to burgle you. Far

from it! I have a proposition of a rather private nature for you.’

Realizing the lewd possibilities of what he had just said, Frank burst out laughing.

‘Oh hell, that sounds completely wrong! What I want, Miz Sandwich, is to pay you — and handsomely,

too: five thousand, to be exact — just to listen to me for half an hour, then neither to say nor write nor

otherwise publicize nor even confide to a friend what I shall propose during the course of that half hour.

The money’s yours, whether you say yes or no to my subsequent proposals.’

‘You sound like a walking legal contract, Mr Caldero … Hey, do my ears deceive me? Five thousand,

just for listening?’

‘That’s the general idea. I’m approaching you on behalf of someone whom we shall refer to between us as

the Sponsor. Though I’d better point out right away that he doesn’t sponsor chat shows or anything like

that.’

‘Why didn’t you phone and tell me you were coming?’

‘Random phone-taps. Key word sampling by our friendly Government computers. This is a very private

affair.’

‘Aren’t you just a little bit scared, standing there in a public place waving all that money about?’ She was

playing him along now, studying him.

‘Itis rather public, isn’t it? There are much more private places than this. Agree to my proposal, and

you’ll have the run of the best of them. But I already checked those Swiss Cheeses for any worms hiding

in the holes — and I left a couple of friends sitting outside in an armoured limo.’

Maccoby and McKinnon were … friends?

Actually, the security chief and his bodyguard buddy were very civil fellows, usually. It was just that

Frank never felt particularly comfortable in their presence. Who knew what the Terrible Two had got up

to before Bruno King hired them?

Frank corrected himself: before theSponsor hired them …

‘Are you a plant lover, Mr Caldero?’

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‘Oh, I’m quite versatile. I can recognize aMonstera Deliciosa when I see one.’

‘Speaking of private places, I hear the grave’s fine and private. You might want to murder me.’

‘A fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace.’

‘Hey, you’re a poetry freak, too! I think I like you.’

‘If I wanted to kill you, I’d just hide behind those leaves and wait.’

‘You might want to torture me a while, first. You can’t do that so easily in a lobby.’

‘And thus avenge the ungodly words you write? To redeem, by pain, from Hell’s pains?Per agonyadastra

? That might be typical of some rabid God Nut. But frankly — and I’m always Frank — what I shall be

proposing on the Sponsor’s behalf is distinctly blasphemous in the eyes of the God Nuts. Still, if you’re

worried, I’ll lay a bet you have a gun tucked away up there. We all have to protect our Paradise, don’t

we? So why don’t you just fetch your gun and keep it pointed at me all the time I’m up there talking to

you? If my silver eloquence won’t sway you, I deserve no better than lead.’ Frank pulled what he hoped

was a tragicomic face, recollecting too late that if the camera was equipped with a fish-eye lens this might

well distort his expression into a horrid leer.

‘I’m offering you five G, just to listen. And if you go through with what I’ll propose, whether it’s

successful or not, there’s one million for you, to be banked in Zürich in your own name or whichever

name you like. I can’t say any more down here.’

‘did I just hear you —?’

‘One million.’

‘This Sponsor of yours …’

‘Must be rich. He is.’

‘It sounds crazy.’

‘No, he just happens to want something very special from you.’

‘How can a lady refuse? I’ll send the elevator down.’

Within the elevator there was no surveillance camera: defect number four. Had there been a camera, it

would have spied a chunky man of middle height with short crinkly black hair, like lamb’s wool. He wore

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horn-rimmed glasses to correct a mild myopia.

Frank sometimes liked to imagine himself as Superman in Clark Kent guise — admittedly a reduced

version. For though he lacked the necessary height and physique, even of Clark Kent, he did dispense

some of the power of Superman, courtesy of the Sponsor. (Whilst Bruno King looked even less like either

Superman or Clark Kent; but he meant to do something about this. Soon, too.)

However, Frank knew perfectly well that he would never launch himself into the sky, and fly. At heart he

was too earth-bound. As solidly rooted as a tree.

Frank’s nose twitched in a rabbity fashion as he reseated his glasses. As the elevator rose laboriously up

the shaft, he dismissed his own fantasies and concentrated on Jean instead.

|Go to Contents |

Chapter 2

Jean Sandwich wasn’t her real name. Before she married Mike Hoffman — now firmly divorced — her

name had been Jean Sandra Norwich. In bitter humour at her situation, she had run her last two names

together.

She might have made the point even plainer by altering the spelling of her first name to ‘Gene’:Gene

Sandwich. But that would have introduced a note of sexual ambiguity. Whereas Jean wasn’t in the least

ambiguous about her sex — or about the fact that Sex, in the broadest definition of the term, had done her

in. Sex had hogtied her. Sex had condemned her to a ludicrous fate.

No ordinary annoyance at sexual role-typing inspired her change of name, however. It was something far

more biologically basic than that. A scientist once declared: ‘A human being is merely a means used by a

gene, to manufacture another gene.’ And like a comic-book heroine whirling around to strip off her

everyday disguise and reveal her secret powers — or, in this case, secret curse — Jean Sandra Norwich

became a gene sandwich. She was the slice of meat imprisoned between the genes of her mother Josie and

the genes of her daughter Alison.

It was a life sentence.

Jean went where she pleased, and did what she chose, and showed all the signs of leading a uniquely

special, precious existence, full of free will. But she knew in her heart that this was all an illusion.

For she was sandwiched. Those devil genes had laid down the law in daughter Alison, exactly as they had

in mother Josie.

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Jean had been fiercely sure that she was a huge improvement upon mother Josie — until Alison began to

grow up. Jean had been certain that she had pulled herself up successfully by her own bootstraps — until

her own stupid mother was recreated, out of Jean’s own womb.

The genes cared not a sparrow’s fart for the person of beauty and wit whom Jean had made of herself.

They spat on her sensitivity and creativity. They pissed on the pottery she crafted to prove her talents:

delicate fantasy landscapes full of castles and dragons and giant fungi. The genes preferred the sow’s ear

to the silk purse any day.

Jean had dreamed that Alison would outshine her by as much again as Jean outshone Josie.

‘Foolish machine,’ said the genes. And out of Jean there squirmed another animal as lacking in finer

feelings as Josie had been. Clearly Alison was destined to run through her whole life as obliviously as her

grandmother, like a chicken with its head chopped off.

Maybe the genes sensed how overcrowded the world was getting. Maybe they had decided that sensitivity

was out of place. Or perhaps they had foreseen a new ice age or a nuclear war, whereby life would be a

matter of grubbing around in the dirt for the next few thousand years. Whatever the truth of this, Jean

might be best lean meat, but from now on, plain bread seemed to be the staple.

While Alison was still an infant, and hope abounding filled Jean’s breast, Jean threw her energies into

inscribing love and humour, excellence and artistry upon the slate of her daughter.

Alas, Alison wasn’t a slate at all. She was a palimpsest: a twice-used parchment, an economy model. As

she grew up, the old writing showed through ever more clearly: the dumb, vandalistic scrawl which

denied that there was any special merit to Jean’s existence.

In her chagrin, Jean Sandra Hoffman — née Norwich — divorced her husband and became Jean

Sandwich.

Yet Jean was far from silent in her disappointment. In a series of virulent magazine articles, which both

caught the public’s fancy and provoked a counterblast of wrath, she explained in detail why she had

walked out on her husband and child, and why uniquely she had sued for non-custody and non-visiting

rights.

Unfortunately, her ex-husband Mike tended to agree with her. So there ensued the newsworthy spectacle

of the two divorcees fighting in public to off-load responsibility for the product of their love on to the

other party. Perhaps because Jean made more commotion, she had won the day. She was more

conspicuously unsuited to be a mother, than Mike to be a father.

Yet she had never blamed Mike personally for her horrid spawn and the ruin of her illusions. How could

she, when it was her own genes that proved dominant? It was against Nature’s deceits that she railed —

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and how she did rail! She would do anything at all to pay Nature back for the dirty trick played on her.

Consequently one of her articles dealt with the controversial topic of human DNA research. In the very

same week that a laboratory believed to be meddling in this field was fire-bombed by a God Nut mob,

Jean wrote approving whole-heartedly of anybody who monkeyed around with ‘God’s blueprints’. (A few

days later the magazine office had its windows stoned by a crowd wearing tee-shirts emblazoned with the

motto: ‘I’m nuts on God.’)

Yet, as Jean pointed out angrily in her article, even if an egg — which she would be glad to donate —

were taken from her ovaries to be retailored in a test tube to produce something closer to her heart’s

desire, all the remaining horde of eggs in her sex organs would still carry the same treacherous message

written in them. Not to mention every damn cell in her whole body. Whatever miracles the DNA

sculptors worked in their admirable laboratories in China and Japan, she would still remain Jean

Sandwich.

The magazine thrived on the wrath. And so did Jean, for a while. Yet the sad truth was that she was

already becoming last season’s sensation. She was rumoured to be writing a book, but perhaps this was a

counsel of desperation.

It was Jean’s DNA article which had first caught the Sponsor’s eye. Whereupon Frank Caldero had begun

checking out Jean’s affairs in detail.

It would be an exaggeration to say that the Sponsor had fallen in love with Jean. He was really in love

with an idea, with a vision. Jean had simply interposed herself between his eye and that vision.

And now her public profile was fading fast. Which was fine, just fine.

Needless to say, Jean’s actual profile — as illustrating her articles — was ample reason for anyone to fall

in love with her, thought Frank …

|Go to Contents |

Chapter 3

The elevator decanted Frank into another lobby unwatched by any camera eye. Stout apartment doors led

off this lobby, with peepholes plugged through them at eye level. Bolted to the door frames were

intercom boxes.

Frank pressed the buzzer of apartment 804.

Nothing happened. After waiting for a whole two minutes he banged on the door with his fist.

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