Mardock Scramble полностью

“The killer instinct in me is just that—instinct,” Boiled said. “It’s neither a means to an end nor an end in itself. The reasons behind my involvement in Paradise don’t concern you; they didn’t back in the day, and they don’t now. More importantly, the person who has the right—and duty—to ask questions is not you, it’s me.” Boiled’s tone was defiant. He continued: “And my third question is this. What are Oeufcoque and the others trying to find out about Shell?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve already seen the official petition to the Broilerhouse. There’s a good chance that the Doctor and Oeufcoque are conducting their own private investigation on Shell.”

“Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to divulge that—not to one whose only means of self-actualization is through killing.”

“What are you saying?” said Boiled.

“I’m saying that giving you the information you want would be paramount to condoning murder. Ask me again once you’ve recovered your sense of value for human life.”

All the expression disappeared from Boiled’s face. As inhuman as his face was normally, this was one step further, hideously, oppressively blank.

“So who’s going to show me the value of life? The people whose bodies were mangled behind closed doors in the name of science?”

Faceman dodged the question. “I’m not talking about the value of life. I’m talking about your own personal values.”

Boiled leaned forward. “I know all about the many lives that Paradise has snuffed out. How other soldiers came here, what happened to them, and how they ended up dying.”

“So you’re trying to say that our aim is to murder people? Like some sort of concentration camp? That’s a foolish way to look at what goes on here, and you know it. Of course there are some researchers here who treat their subjects as objects. But they are human beings too, and they have arrived at their own personal, sophisticated value systems, their own conceptions of the value of human life. Without this, you wouldn’t last long as a researcher here—it’d be too tough on the mind.”

“False value systems. Totally contrived.”

“Of course they’re contrived—what other sort of value system is there? Or are you saying that there’s a physical, tangible object called a ‘value’ lying around somewhere, just waiting to be discovered so that everyone can see what the truth is?”

“My heart died in this so-called Paradise. I can no longer feel that there’s any such thing as value to life.”

“That’s because the fear of death has been removed from you. The army—and you—wanted it so. To give a soldier a sense of immortality. There were many steps to this procedure, and you’re the only one ever to follow it through to the end, voluntarily or otherwise.”

“I’ve also forgotten sorrow and anger.”

“At the time, our consciousness-threshold examination techniques weren’t yet perfect…”

“I’ve even been robbed of my ability to sleep.”

“Asomniatic Activity—the highest-priority research target we were given, designed to strengthen military personnel. You know very well that it used to be a matter of course for amphetamines to be prescribed to help soldiers stand up to the trials and tribulations of war—was that any better? If you remember, at the point you came to this facility, you were utterly dependent on stimulants—total addiction. All we did was try and save you, and countless other soldiers, from such a fate.”

“Save me, you say?”

“That’s right. Save you. I felt so then, and I still feel I was right. I have a lot of time for people who accept their burden and take what life throws at them.”

“Are you saying, Professor, that you’ll be able to teach me again whether life has any value?” asked Boiled, an unusually dignified and serious tone to the words spilling forth from his lips, even for him. “Does life have any value?”

But Faceman shook his head. He smiled placidly and continued. “That question is folly—you have it all upside down. Value is not something that just exists. It’s a concept, a construct. And when people neglect their duty to construct their own valuation of life, they revert back to being no more than beasts. After all, what is society if not a peculiarly human invention that allows people to conceptualize and propagate their own belief systems?”

Boiled remained silent, his eyes dark.

Faceman continued in his quiet voice. “It’s been observed on numerous occasions that the act of killing other members of one’s species is not limited to human beings—it’s a trait observable in all animals. The reason that animals are furnished with the ability to kill is so that they can kill. For animals, the impetus to kill is always there, constantly at the ready. That’s their system of self-perpetuation, you see. Their system is pure and simple, just like human society.”

“Are you calling me an animal?”