The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [90]
“Time-consuming nature?” Smith queried.
Geyer raised his hands helplessly. “Given that he also contacted the Ahasuerus Foundation,” he said, “I could hardly help drawing the inference that he was speaking of a technology that would permit the extension of life, but he did not say so in so many words.”
“But that is one of your so-called core concerns, isn’t it?” Smith’s suspicion that Geyer was being evasive was painfully obvious.
“One of them,” Geyer readily conceded. “The founder of the Ahasuerus Foundation was rather narrowly interested in the possibility of human longevity, apparently assuming that human nature could be changed in that single respect without unduly affecting its other components. We have always taken the view that a more general transformation is desirable, of which longevity would not necessarily be the most important aspect.”
“You’re more interested in breeding a master race than in simply helping everyone to live longer,” Smith said, not bothering to employ the kind of inflection that would have turned it into a rhetorical question.
Geyer’s expression hardly changed, but Lisa put that down to stern self-control in the face of naked offensiveness. The pills were taking effect now, and she felt a certain tautness and tone returning to the muscles of her limbs and face. She hoped that the dose wouldn’t prove too great. She needed to have her wits about her; it wouldn’t do any good to be wide awake but too wired to maintain a proper balance.
“If you’ll forgive me saying so, Mr. Smith,” Geyer said smoothly, “that’s the kind of observation one never hears anymore outside of England. Here, as in Germany, there is hardly anyone now alive who first learned to understand the world while Adolf Hitler was still in power. In four years’ time, a whole century will have elapsed since the end of World War Two. It’s time to put away the old insults, don’t you think? The purpose of the Institute of Algeny is to fund research in biotechnology that will assist the cause of human evolution.”
“Point taken,” Smith said easily. “I take it that you’d rather I was equally careful to avoid the use of such terms as übermensch?”
“Yes, I would,” Geyer said equably.
“Even though your own publicity material describes algeny as a Nietzschean discipline and Thus Sprach Zarathustra as one of its inspirational documents?”
“Even so,” Geyer conceded with the ghost of a smile.
“Not that you have anything to hide, of course,” Smith persisted.
“Nothing at all,” Geyer said. “I am merely trying to save time. Our aims are widely misunderstood, and clearing up misconceptions can be a vexatious business. It is true that a few of our intellectual antecedents harbored some very strange hopes, but in the days when there was no technology available to carry forward their aims, they had little alternative but to place optimism above practicality. Now that technology has replaced superstition, we have shed the delusions of the past. Professor Miller did not seem to be confused or dismayed by the kind of slanders that have occasionally been leveled against our organization, and I find it difficult to believe they are relevant to your inquiry—unless you believe that mere contact with us might have been enough to inspire his kidnapping by political extremists.” Geyer seemed to find that possibility amusing, implying by his attitude that the suggestion was absurd.
“I believe that’s possible,” Smith said doggedly. “Has your Institute ever had any links with a movement whose members call themselves Real Women?”
“No,” Geyer said, still manifesting slight but rather contemptuous amusement.
“But you’ve heard of them?”
“Yes. We have nothing against what they refer to, rather oxy-moronically, as natural physical culture. I suppose they might have regarded our endeavors as a kind of unnatural physical culture, but I’m not aware that they ever singled us out for particular criticism.”
“You’re using the past tense,” Smith pointed out.
“My impression is that the feminist movement no longer has any meaningful existence, as a movement,” Geyer said.