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things? Should he? Does he have any entitlement to act, if he does?
'Which would be the right side for a superhero to "choose" in a revolution? What would a
superhero's position be on euthanasia, overpopulation?
'Like everyone else's, my heart skips a beat when I see that streak of red and blue in the sky. But I
have reservations. For, even when he restricts his intervention to situations which are, on the face
of it, morally unambiguous, he is damaging us. Because, somewhere within us, we know that next
time we need take that little bit less care, be that little bit less perfect... He is a crutch for us. At
best.'
The prosecuting attorney was called Stock a woman, athletically slim, mid-forties. Telegenic. Over the
days of the pre-trial she built her arguments with skill.
Stock called his parents to the stand. Miserably, liver-spotted hands shaking, the old farming couple told
the world, for the first time, of the strange origin of their child. Their adopted child.
Reader's smooth face filled screens, whispering.
'His intentions are benevolent. I don't deny it. But now that his "secret identity" has been exposed
in open court, we know what we always suspected: that he is not human. He landed on Earth, in a
rocket-ship in a field in Kansas, as a baby: in a ship that had carried him from the wreckage of his
native world.
'He it is alien. And by "saving" us against our will, this alien takes away our dignity as
humans.'
Falco felt his own blood pump, in response to Reader's words. Every word is calculated, Falco
thought. He knows the impact of every syllable. Reader is speaking to some hidden part of me. The
part which betrayed him. This is why I did it.
The TVs, the papers sprawled over Falco's desk, were like antennae. And Falco sensed a slow shift in
the public mood.
A shift, against him.
It didn't surprise anybody when Justice Hynes recommended referral to a full trial.
It took two months to assemble the court. He was kept in a secure unit, on a military base in Omaha.
Secure. Falco knew, everyone knew, that there wasn't a cage on Earth that could restrain him, if he
didn't want to be restrained. But he submitted to his captors, his passiveness shaming those assigned to
guard him.
One of his guards quit his job and sold his story to tabloid TV.
His costume had been taken away. He was given prison issue clothing. He submitted to that, too. He
didn't need food, he said, although he was provided with three meals a day. But he needed sunlight.
The guard described him walking in the cramped yard, his face turned up to the Sun like some muscular
flower.
The trial was televised.
The prosecution's key piece of evidence was the testimony of Lester Stiggins, CEO of Readergen.
Stiggins was a small, round man, sweating under the brilliant lights; but in his flat Boston accent he spoke
calmly and well. Convincingly. 'Readergen is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Readercorp,' Stiggins said.
'We specialize in genetic engineering: research and development, and commercial exploitation. We were
working on fragments of a complex organic molecule which had been discovered in a meteorite.'
'Are organic materials common in meteorites?'
'Yes. Organics are common throughout the universe. But such substances are mostly formed, we think,
by inanimate processes the action of radiation, and so forth rather than by the processes of life, here
on Earth.'
'But there was something different about this fragment.'
'Yes. It's unusual to find molecular strands of such length and complexity. We thought they were
fragments of some equivalent of DNA. We suspected that this particular material did have biologic
origin.'
'You're saying you found fragments of the DNA of an alien life form?'
'A DNA analogue,' Stiggins said carefully. 'Yes.'
'Where did you think this "DNA analogue" might have come from?'
Stiggins smiled and turned his round head. 'From the same planet, or origin, as him.'
'Witness is looking at the defendant,' Stock said briskly. 'What made you think that?'
'It was the simplest hypothesis. His world, wherever and whatever it is, is the only home for life we know
about, outside Earth.'
'Did you try matching your sample against the defendant's genetic type?'
'We tried to contact him. But he wouldn't respond.' Stiggins shrugged. 'It was his right, I suppose, not to
give samples. We certainly couldn't force him.'
'So what did you do?'
'We continued to work on our meteorite sample. After a while '
'Yes?'
'We began to believe we could reconstruct the DNA-analogue.'
'Reconstruct it?'
Falco, watching, had to smile; Stock's performance as an actress building almost unbearable tension
out of material she must already know by heart was consummate.
'You mean, you could grow alien life forms?'
'I wouldn't say that.' Stiggins said carefully. 'But we might have been able to retrieve some
characteristics.' Stiggins ticked off points on his small, neat fingers. 'First of all there is energy conversion.
We know or we believe that the defendant draws his powers from the Sun.'
'Plants take energy from sunlight, don't they?'
'Through photosynthesis, yes.' Stiggins smiled. 'But you don't see too many flying trees. If it's true that he
draws from the Sun, it must be by some high-capacity transfer process we don't yet understand. Perhaps
there is an agent which links the fusing core of the Sun to his body an agent to which the cooler outer
layers of the Sun are transparent. A neutrino flux, perhaps, or dark matter, which '
Stock cut short his speculation. 'What do you think, Dr Stiggins, of the morals of siphoning off huge
amounts of solar energy mankind's main energy reserve for personal use?'
Stiggins shrugged. 'I don't approve. How could I? We don't know what damage is being done, to the
Sun. Readergen's research, by comparison, was controlled; directed towards the general betterment of
mankind.'
'How so?'
'Imagine a fuel cell drawing its power seamlessly from the Sun. No more oil-burning, or nuclear power...
And we might have gone further.'
'Yes?' Stock prompted.
'Imagine a world free from hunger, a world in which every human could draw sustenance from the Sun.
We could perform great engineering feats with our bare hands even travel to other worlds.'
Falco watched the faces of the jury. They were entranced. Stiggins has been well coached, Falco
thought.
'What stopped your research, Dr Stiggins?'
'He did.'
'Let the record show that the witness is indicating the defendant.'
He had arrived in Readergen's central labs, in the middle of a working day. Stiggins had been called
immediately. Lab workers and site guards had clustered around that extraordinary figure in red, blue and
gold, buzzing as ineffectually as flies.
He'd gathered up the fragments of meteorite, from the various experiments, instruments and stores, and
wrapped them in his cape.
'We couldn't stop him, of course.'
'Did he say what he was doing?'
'He told us he couldn't allow our research to continue. He was going to take the material away, destroy
it. He said that the exploitation of the DNA-analogue would be catastrophic. There would be wars, that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]