Nordens stood with Jerry Tierney by the landing pad at Pearse, watching the helicopter that would take Samurai to Dulles rise into the night sky. The helicopter turned onto a northeast heading and sped away to lose itself among the stars. Nordens stared after the receding speck, moonlight glinting from his spectacles. Tierney looked disconsolately at the ground.
"We can do no more," Nordens said. "Everything -depends on Samurai now."
"If you say so," Tierney replied neutrally.
They turned and began walking toward the experimental wing. "I don't get the impression that you quite understand the full ramifications of the project, Jerry," Nordens said, as if reading his thoughts.
"Explain it to me, then," Tierney said.
"We are constrained to the service of fools. Those people in Washington are too dull-witted to grasp the opportunity for real power when it presents itself to them. They live their overcautious lives paralyzed by their own indecision and half measures."
Tierney looked at him uncertainly. Nordens seemed not to notice, and expounded as they passed the security post and went on into the ground-level reception area, "Reprogramming the opposition's political beliefs is only the tip of what can be achieved. It's too limited—limited by the necessity of concentrating on just a few key individuals—people like Daparras, for instance. The targets that we could hope for would be too few, and the time required for each too much for the whole thing to be really effective. It's not a practicable way to go about things if you want to shape a society."
They stopped in front of the elevators. It wasn't the first time that Tierney had heard Nordens talking in this fashion.
"Have you read Plato, Jerry?" Nordens asked.
"Can't say it's something that I ever got around to," Tierney replied.
"Do so. It will clarify your understanding of the importance of the state, and the duty of the citizen to subordinate individual interests to those of the whole. And who is to decide what are the better interests of the whole? That's where what we in this part of the world called democracy was bound to fail, leading us to the predicament that we now find ourselves in. Sheep can't rule themselves. They're not capable of determining in which direction their true interests lie. Society will produce an elite whose natural role is to know and decide, just as the place of the rest is to follow. But discipline and firmness are essential for such an order to prevail—and, if need be, ruthlessness."
The elevator arrived, and the door opened. Tierney was going on through to the security office and had intended leaving Nordens here, but Nordens ignored the waiting car and continued, "That truth was glimpsed by many thinkers in history, but the ideals that they aspired to were always thwarted by the perverseness of raw human material, which was all they ever had to work with. Even Plato himself failed, when he went as adviser to Dionysius and attempted to guide the formation of a model state in Sicily. The ideal society has always been unattainable because the material to build it was unsuitable. Until now." Nordens's eyes gleamed -behind his spectacles. "Now we can change the material!"
Tierney looked at him uncertainly. "The material? You mean all of it? You're not talking about just a few individuals?"
Nordens shook his head. "Test cases. Mere beginnings. You might alter the population's disposition slightly by -influencing a few individuals like Daparras, but you won't change it radically. What a paucity of result for the effort expended. . . . But suppose we had the ability to predispose an entire population to exhibiting more desirable and compliant attitudes, say by introducing suitable chemical agents on a mass scale—which could be accomplished by any of several means. Because I think that could be the next step in this—provided we can learn enough about the relevant transfer patterns to encode them into molecular form." Nordens was visibly excited by the prospect. He grasped Tierney by the arm. "And who knows. Maybe, one day, we could actually fuse it into the genome and make it hereditable. So once society was conditioned into being untroublesome, its traits would automatically be passed on, which would enable us, its rightful rulers, to govern unthreatened and effectively, without the inconvenience of having to indoctrinate every generation afresh. In other words, we are standing on the threshold of a whole new age. But Ashling could give the Offworlders the key to unlocking the information that will enable it to be realized. And that's why he must be stopped. That is what this is all about."
Tierney looked away, at the concrete-walled passages and doors leading to the lab areas. Or to prevent the rest of the world from finding out, he thought to himself.
Nordens, carried away now by his vision, went on, "We've shown that we can shape an individual to our needs. Next is to shape a whole population. That's where the people who are backing this are heading. I'm talking about powerful people, Jerry. There's no better security in life than making sure you're on the right side."
Clearly, Nordens had no hesitation in ranking himself among the elite who would plan and guide the shaping of this utopia. Tierney was less happy about where those such as himself were likely to end up in the eventual scheme of things.
After Nordens finally entered the elevator, Tierney continued on his way to the security office. It led through the bio-assay section, where various animals were kept. Tierney walked between the cages of rats, hamsters, and rabbits, all laid out in neat rows according to what people like Nordens viewed as a desirable pattern of order and tidiness, suited to their own convenience. That's how they would organize all of us, Tierney thought.
His mood had grown very troubled by the time he got back to his office. Somebody was going to have to do something before this got out of hand, he decided. Nordens and Circo were already taking it upon themselves effectively to formulate their own foreign policy. What would be next if that kind of megalomania went unchecked?