“I doubt they’re any worse than the ways you’ve already fucked with the palette,” Desjardins said.
Her face fell. A twinge of remorse flickered in Desjardins’s throat. He swallowed, absurdly grateful for the feeling. “Just don’t mix them with axotropes,” he added, more gently.
“Thanks.” She took the olive branch with the drug, popped a cherry-red marble into her mouth. Desjardins could see her bracing herself.
“I was afraid you were never going to talk to me again,” she said softly.
If her hair had been any finer it would be synthetic.
“It would have served you right.” He let the words hang between them. He imagined knotting that jet-black ponytail around his fist. He imagined suspending her by it, letting her feet kick just off the floor...
No. Stop it.
“But I think I understand why you did it,” he said at last, letting her off the hook.
“Really?”
“I think so. You had a lot of nerve.” He took a breath. “But you had a lot of faith in me, too. You wouldn’t have done it otherwise. I guess that counts for something.”
It was as though she’d been holding her breath since she arrived, and only let it out now that her sentence had been read aloud: Conditional discharge. She bought it, Desjardins thought. She thinks there’s hope—
—while another part of him, diminished but defiant, insisted Why does she have to be wrong?
He brushed her cheek with his palm, could just barely hear the the soft, quick intake of breath his touch provoked. He blinked against the fleeting image of a backhanded blow across that sweet, unsuspecting face. “You have a lot more faith in me than I do, Alice. I don’t know how warranted it is.”
“They stole your freedom to choose. I only gave it back to you.”
“You stole my conscience. How am I supposed to choose?”
“With your mind, Killjoy. With that brilliant, beautiful mind. Not some gut-instinct emotion that’s done more harm than good for the past couple million years.”
He sank onto the sofa, a small, sudden pit opening in his stomach. “I’d hoped it was a side-effect,” he said softly.
She sat beside him. “What do you mean?”
“You know.” Desjardins shook his head. “People never think things through. I kind of hoped you and your buddies just—hadn’t worked out the ramifications, you know? You were just trying to subvert the Trip, and the whole conscience thing was a—a misstep. Unforeseen. But I guess not.”
She put her hand on his knee. “Why would you hope that?”
“I’m not really sure.” He barked a soft laugh. “I guess I thought, if you didn’t know you were—I mean, if you do something by accident that’s one thing, but if you deliberately set out to make a bunch of psychopaths—”
“We’re not making psychopaths, Achilles. We’re freeing people from conscience.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You can still feel. Your amygdala still works. Your dopamine and serotonin levels are normal. You’re capable of long-term planning, you’re not a slave to your impulses. Spartacus doesn’t change any of that.”
“Is that what you think.”
“You really think all the assholes in the world are clinical?”
“Maybe not. But I bet all the clinicals in the world are assholes.”
“You’re not,” she said.
She stared at him with serious, dark eyes. He couldn’t stop smelling her. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to hug her. He wanted to gut her like a fish and put her head on a stick.
He gritted his teeth and kept silent.
“Ever hear of the trolly paradox?” Alice said after a moment.
Desjardins shook his head.
“Six people on a runaway train, headed off a cliff. The only way to save them is switch the train to another track. Except there’s someone else standing on that track, and he won’t be able to get out of the way before the train squashes him. Do you reroute?”
“Of course.” It was the greater good at its most simplistic.
“Now say you can’t reroute the train, but you can stop it by pushing someone into its path. Do you?”
“Sure,” he said immediately.
“I did that for you,” Alice pronounced.
“Did what?”
“Most people don’t accept the equivalence. They think it’s right to reroute the train, but wrong to push someone in front of it. Even though it’s exactly the same death, for exactly the same number of lives saved.”
He grunted.
“Conscience isn’t rational, Achilles. You know what parts of your brain light up when you make a moral decision? I’ll tell you: the medial frontal gyrus. The posterior cingulate gyrus. The angular gyrus. All—”
“Emotional centers,” Desjardins cut in.
“Damn right. The frontal lobes don’t spark at all. And even people who recognise the logical equivalence of those scenarios have to really work at it. It just feels wrong to push someone to their death, even for the same net gain of lives. The brain has to wrestle with all this stupid, unfounded guilt. It takes longer to act, longer to reach critical decisions, and when all’s said and done it’s less likely to make the right decion. That’s what conscience is, Killjoy. It’s like rape or greed or kin selection—it served its purpose a few million years ago, but it’s been bad news ever since we stopped merely surviving our environment and started dominating it instead.”
You rehearsed that, Desjardins thought.
He allowed himself a small smile. “There’s a bit more to people than guilt and intellect, my dear. Maybe guilt doesn’t just hobble the mind, did you ever think of that? Maybe it hobbles other things as well.”
“Like what?”
“Well, just for example—” he paused, pretending to cast around for inspiration— “how do you know I’m not some kind of crazed serial killer? How do you know I’m not psychotic, or suicidal, or, or into torture, say?”
“I’d know,” Alice said simply.
“You think sex killers walk around with signs on their foreheads?”
She squeezed his thigh. “I think that I’ve known you for a whole long time, and I think there’s no such thing as a perfect act. If someone was that full of hate, they’d slip up eventually. But you—well, I’ve never heard of a monster who respected women so much he refused to even fuck them. And by the way, you might want to reconsider that particular position. Just a thought.”
Desjardins shook his head. “You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?”
“Completely. And I’ve got oodles of patience.”
“Good. Now you can use some of it.” He stood and smiled down at her. “I’ve gotta go to the bathroom for a minute. Make yourself at home.”
She smiled back. “I will indeed. Take your time.”
He locked the door, leaned across the sink and stared hard into the mirror. His reflection stared back, furious.
She betrayed you. She turned you into this.
He liked her. He loved her. Alice Jovellanos had been his loyal friend for years. Desjardins hung onto that as best he could.
She did it on purpose.