The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [91]
“It is if Morgan Miller has been kidnapped by Real Women,” Smith answered sourly.
Geyer turned to look at Lisa again. “You must have discussed Nietzsche with Morgan Miller, Dr. Friemann,” he said. “Perhaps you could advise your colleague that he is taking the wrong inference from his citation in our charter.”
“I’m not so sure that he is,” Lisa replied. She felt strangely calm now that the effect of the pills was no longer manifest as a disturbance. “I haven’t read your charter myself, and I never had the privilege of hearing Morgan’s views on Vril—or, for that matter, on your particular brand of algeny. If it was a recent enthusiasm of his, he’s more likely to have discussed it with Stella Filisetti, his current research assistant. Did he mention her contribution to his experiments, by any chance?”
“I don’t believe so,” Geyer said. “He gave me to understand that he had begun this work before or shortly after the turn of the century. If so, he’d have been far more likely to credit you as a contributor, don’t you think?”
“Did he?” Lisa inquired. She could feel a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, and wondered how long it had been since she had last smiled.
“I fear not,” Geyer admitted. “He implied that it was a sideline to the research on which his early reputation was based—an unexpected spin-off. Perhaps he was reluctant to discuss it with his colleagues until he’d made more tangible progress.”
“You just told us that he’d hinted to you that he had made more tangible progress,” Lisa pointed out.
“Perhaps there came a time, quite recently, when he reviewed his results and began to wonder whether they were as disappointing as they had seemed at the time,” Geyer suggested.
“We need detail, Herr Geyer,” Lisa said. “We need to know precisely how this hypothetical research was supposed to make a contribution to the cause of human evolution. If it wasn’t a failed life-extension technology, what was it?”
“I wish I knew,” Geyer said, exuding sincerity with practiced ease. “The puzzle becomes more intriguing with every hour that passes. He did not tell me. But if I were to answer as an Algenist rather than as a mere witness, I would point out that one cannot alter one aspect of human nature without altering others. A man who did not age, and who might live forever if he did not die violently, would differ from you and me in many subtle ways, Dr. Friemann, and perhaps in some not so subtle. Ancient romances of the elixir of life could sidestep such questions, but serious scientists cannot. If someone came to you with a supposed elixir of life, Dr. Frie-mann, you would be bound to ask the awkward questions, would you not? How, exactly, does it work? What, exactly, are its side effects? There are unintended consequences in everything we do, are there not?
“If Morgan Miller had told me in so many words that what he wanted to give me was a technology that would allow people to live longer, those are the questions I would have asked him—but he did not tell me what he had discovered, or why it had not lived up to his expectations, or why his attempts to overcome the problem had come to nothing. If the people who have abducted him had not asked those questions beforehand, they have acted precipitously, perhaps at the risk of bitter disappointment. If they had asked them but had jumped to the wrong conclusions, the depth of their disappointment will be all the greater. Do you see what I mean?”
It was impossible to be certain, of course, but Lisa thought she could see at least part of his meaning. If Matthias Geyer had reached the same tentative hypothesis that she had, he’d had more time to think about its implications, with fewer distractions. Smith’s reference to Real Women hadn’t seemed to come as any surprise to him, which reinforced Lisa’s suspicion that Leland and the Institute of Algeny were hand in glove—but while Leland had seized upon the apocalyptic aspects of the Real Woman’s speech, Geyer might have taken the same view as Lisa as to its actual import.