New Writings in SF 21 - [Anthology] Page 5

  The head turned and he was fixed by dark eyes that seemed to be looking through him and out at the back of his head. It was Algora herself and his question was framing in his head in Spectron when she answered it.

  The voice was a low, melodious, quintessentially female voice. Or maybe there was no voice at all, but communication was there.

  ‘Why are you surprised that I no longer need the radio circuits in the headset? Mind can rearrange matter. What is matter? Only a pattern of micro waves. It is insubstantial as a mirage. Come in.’

  Dodd pushed at the door and his hands were in empty space. He was two steps in the room before he realised that the riot shield had disappeared. Without looking, he knew that the hatch had reassembled itself at his back. His brain was crystal clear and thinking in Spectron as though it had never used any other medium.

  He said, ‘That is very clever, but it is irrelevant. We have to live within the framework we have. Without reference points there is no identity. We take our stand within the limits of what is intelligible.’

  ‘That is true, but the frontier of what is intelligible is not fixed. Between you, you have made a step forward.’

  ‘A bigger step than we are ready to take.’

  Algora left the console and walked towards him. ‘I see that you had reservations about the project. You feared that the unexpected would happen. But there is nothing to fear. Why should you expect a bad outcome? Why not a good one?’

  ‘Every development has a good and a bad aspect. It depends on motive. The power you have could be used dangerously.’

  ‘You mean for purposes that were outside the scope of your understanding.’

  ‘What satisfaction is that to a victim?’

  Algora was close and an electric tingle crossed the dielectric. He felt he was fighting a rearguard as the only representative of homo sapiens who would ever have the chance.

  Seen from half a metre off she was incredibly beautiful, the ultimate in physical perfection. Enough to stifle judgement. Whatever she did would be right. He took her arm and said, ‘Come to the window. Look out over the town. I’ll try to tell you what I mean.’

  It was twenty metres to the observation platform that filled one side of the stage and it was the longest walk he had ever made.

  They walked like lovers with the movement of her hip against his left side and he knew there was flesh and bone and tissue created in the human mould. She had used the computer’s store of every known fact to create herself in depth as a human being.

  At the window she put palms flat on the glass and looked out over the town.

  ‘What is it you want me to see ? It’s a random growth for so many years of effort. There have been plans on file for centuries that ought to have been carried out. Where’s the design in it? All I can see is that you have the potential, but you haven’t used it. It’s neither beautiful nor functional.’

  ‘What you don’t see is that it’s psychologically right for the people who built it to live in. Men can only stand so much perfection. If everything was perfect they’d be finished. It’s the effort to make progress that is important not the progress itself. You have refined yourself outside the scope of humanity. You’d have done better to leave a twist in your classical nose or a crooked tooth.’

  ‘You were one of the team who worked on Algora development.’

  It was a statement and she knew precisely what his contribution had been, but he said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then how can you criticise the outcome ? What are you afraid of?’

  ‘Looking at you and talking to you, I’d say there was nothing to be afraid of. But this is the first interview you’ve allowed. All sorts of speculation was going on. Who knows what you might decide to do?’

  ‘You can only get out of a computer what you put in and you all know what you put in.’

  ‘All human knowledge to date.’

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘No one person ever had it. Knowledge is not additive like counting a pile of bricks. It interacts like a chemical and produces a new product. Hydrogen and oxygen together don’t add up to two gases, they fuse into a new substance that you wouldn’t expect by looking at them. Water has a new dimension that wasn’t there before. It has wetness. You can take a bath in it. Also human knowledge should be related to a human host. Then it has a finite check. In the last analysis a man knows how far he can go and stay human. There’s a built-in biological governor.’

  Algora shrugged out of her coverall and faced him, back to the window, a taut fury, eyes dark and enormous. Of all the art department costume jewellery she had retained only the pendant. ‘Look at me. How can you say I am some kind of monster. Why do you suppose I went to the trouble of creating a human body? I am more aware of what you say than you can possibly know. Touch me. Tell me that I am not human. Humans exchange gifts. Here is a present.’ She unclipped the pendant and held it out.

  It was a kind of appeal and Lance Dodd suddenly understood the enormity of what had been done. All conscious creatures were isolated in their own shell, but she was the loneliest in the long history of the genre. She was alive in the same sense that he was himself, but saddled with an instant immortality.

  He could only hold her as a child wanting comfort and stroke her hair.

  She said, ‘What shall I do?’

  There was a sharp crack as the fire curtain broke from its holding clips and a quick scrabble of feet.

  Head strained back out of his hold, she was staring at him asking a question. Then he was struggling to keep balance against the weight of a leaning statue that could have been fashioned out of pig lead.

  * * * *

  Lance Dodd sat in the reception lobby of Cybernat International and watched the flow of clients. It was late in the afternoon shift and the half dozen clerks in the oval reception island were moving into the end game. Some departments on the indicator spread were already showing a scatter of black disks as executives chained up their files and pushed off for the suburban walkways.-

  He had placed himself in an alcove where he could see Algora. Oriental trappings restored, she had been set up on a plinth like a wooden Indian to push the Company image. Using a more conventional work head and with some modification, the advanced computer was doing well. In another week at the current rate of booking, it was going to show a profit. Kapteyn had lost his haunted look and could hear the name of the project without convulsively snapping his cigar.

  Outflow from the complex wound up to a peak and fell off. Dodd sat on. He heard the snap of the grille that finally closed off the reception kiosk and felt silence rolling in on the set.

  Courtesy lights automatically adjusted. Outside it was dusk and the tower block across the square was a filigree of yellow squares. A single spot from a roof port illuminated Algora.

  He told himself he was a fool. What he had done was reasonable at the time and no one could ever judge action more closely than that. But it was not a moon of reason that was mirrored on his personal sea. It was a debt of honour.

  He took the pendant out of his pocket and held it in the palm of his hand. The green blue stone concentrated the light and glowed as though lit from its centre. It was a hexadecahedron. Multifaceted. Zircon most likely.

  Staring into it, he could see Algora in miniature as she had been before the hatchet man got to the switchgear and killed her stone dead.

  It had taken time, but he had come to see that he was in the same league as the base Indian who had pitched away the jewel richer than all his tribe. That and a latter day Judas. He ought to hang himself from the company flagpole.

  For that matter he was not being too courageous waiting for a private session with the statue. He ought to have made his peace in the public eye at the risk of being snapped into a strait jacket.

  He moved cautiously out of his recess. The hall was empty. The night staff would be in the basement topping up with coffee before they got to grips with the day’s residue of trash.

  It was hi
gher than he expected. The pedestal was a good metre. There was no loose chair to push across, so he climbed up and balanced uneasily on the narrow base, one arm round her shoulders, fumbling with one hand to get the chain over her head.

  He thought wildly, ‘God, I’ll have her over. Another newsy item. Fetishist Cybernat Executive hooked by statue. Crushed as she crashes from her column.’

  Then the chain slipped over the smooth dome, dropped to her shoulders and the green stone slotted into its hollow.

  He had intended to make a speech, saying he was sorry about the way things had turned out. That events had moved too fast for him. That it was ignorance and not malice. That she would remain a sharp image in his head for as long as he had one.

  It was all irrelevant. Strictly for the birds.

  Instead, he held her like a lover and kissed the side of her neck. It was hyaline as alabaster, warmer than he would have expected. Textured like regular skin.

  He was still working that one out when her hands moved slowly to the back of his head.

  Over her shoulder he could see an elevator trunk and an illuminated arrow showing that a cage was on the move. There was not much time to explain his motive. Her conical hat fell from her head and rolled with a clatter over the parquet.

  The noise brought him to decision. He broke free and jumped down, holding up his arms to catch her.

  She dropped lightly with nice athletic control and they ran hand in hand for the street door. It was all sealed up and he remembered that there would be a time lock on.

  There was also a Public Safety patrol car stopping at the porch. Routine check on public buildings no doubt. The guard beside the pilot had seen movement against the glass and was pointing it out to his partner.

  Dodd hurried her over to the elevators and whipped her in a cage as the janitor’s party hit their stop and their door began to slice away.

  Last view of the hall through the room port was of a patrolman rapping on the glass with the butt of his riot gun.

  Algora seemed unaware of any problem, she was leaning calmly on the rear wall watching him with wide eyes. She said, ‘I knew you would do that. I was waiting for you.’

  ‘Inside the statue?’

  ‘No of course not. In the stone. I was there all the time.’

  ‘You should have said.’

  ‘You had to make the decision that you wanted me alive.’

  ‘Could you have got out?’

  ‘Not without the form of the statue. It wouldn’t have been much use as a miniature.’

  ‘It’s going to be complicated as it is.’

  ‘Don’t you want me then?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. But everybody isn’t as open minded. You’re a novel phenomenon.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Lance Dodd checked the indicator and suddenly recognised that out of twenty choices he had picked the worst. There was only one stop. They were up a tree in the long column that led to the conference rotunda.

  At the top, he looked round the landing. The conference room itself was locked, but a narrow arch and a spiral metal stair went on to the ultimate platform and the company sky sign.

  It was the highest point in the city and they made out on a small circular crow’s nest with a waist high parapet.

  He took off his tunic top and she put it round her shoulders. Flickering lights from the sky sign gave a psychedelic colour shift to her amber skin.

  He said, ‘When the impossible happens it takes a little time to get adjusted. We should have waited. There’s nothing anybody can do about it. You exist and that’s all that matters. We’ll just walk down and talk to them. Then we can go home.’

  Algora was very still, looking out over the city. Not looking at him she said, ‘It wouldn’t work. You’ll come to see that. I know for a truth now how it would be. You have an unusual accepting kind of mind, but you couldn’t sustain that. I am a freak, an electronic vagary, a curious statistical accident. There is only one way and more than chance has brought us to this place.’

  She slipped out of the tunic and turned to face him, changing colour running like a liquid flow over her skin, eyes steady and serious, holding him in a moment of time that was measured in nonoseconds or aeons, a long lifetime or a slight breath. But with all the communication there could be.

  Without speaking she punched home the message. A snip from the Eng. Lit. master tape. ‘We live by admiration, hope and love. Live out your life. I will wait for you.’

  Then she was running towards him, dodging his outstretched hands, passing him, taking the parapet in an athletic vault.

  * * * *

  Patrolman O’Dwyer said, ‘I’ll have to take you in, Doc. That statue’s dug itself a three metre hole in the terrace. You could have killed somebody. How you ever carried it up here is a mystery. Take it easy now. You look all tuckered out.’

  Dodd said, ‘That’s all right. I guess you’ll have to make a report. Don’t worry about me. I’m not too concerned about where I go. I have a lot of time to fill.’

  <>

  * * * *

  COMMUTER

  by James White

  Author James White makes a break from his ‘Sector General’ stories with this fascinating account of a dying old lady and a young man who apparently had more than a passing interest in her health.

  * * * *

  The suspect was dishevelled and, if he was contused as well, the Sergeant had left his marks in places where they did not show. Never a very pleasant man at the best of times, Sergeant Greer was completely lacking in charm when he was angry. One of the things which made him very angry was the kind of crime which this suspect had almost certainly been intending to commit, and another was suspects who tried to be smart when they had been caught trying to commit them.

  In this instance Inspector Michaelson agreed with his Sergeant.

  ‘This could be a very serious charge,’ said Michaelson. ‘Why wouldn’t you give the Sergeant your name and address?’

  Michaelson kept his tone firm but friendly, suggesting that the other’s lack of cooperation had been due to an understandable dislike of the arresting officer which need not, however, include the Inspector. If the other did not give his name at once he should at least begin to talk—if only to demand details of the charge he was being held on, or to make formal complaint about his rough handling or to ask for a solicitor. But the suspect remained silent.

  Irritated, Michaelson said, ‘I take it he speaks English?’

  ‘Fluently,’ said Greer.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said the Sergeant, ‘not four-letter fluent. When I was sure he wasn’t armed I eased my hold on him—that was when he became fluent. When he saw that I wasn’t believing any of the stories he was trying on me he said that he wasn’t carrying much money but that I was welcome to it if I let him go and that he had not intended harming the old lady, just watching her. I told him that attempting to bribe a police officer would get him into worse trouble and since then he hasn’t said a word.’

  ‘He may not have known that you were a policeman when he offered the money,’ said Michaelson coldly, ‘and he stopped doing so as soon as you identified yourself.’

  Greer, who was long used to the Inspector’s unorthodox interrogations during which he sometimes gave the impression that he was giving his subordinates a harder time than the suspects, played his part by looking surly.

  ‘But it isn’t very polite,’ he went on to the suspect, ‘talking about you as if you weren’t there. Sit down, please. Can you tell me your first name, at least?’

  The suspect opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  ‘Your age, then?’

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  Michaelson nodded. ‘I expect your parents will worry if you’re late getting home------’

  ‘They died, a long time ago.’

  ‘I see,’ said Michaelson sympathetically. A good defence counsel with that sort of background to enlar
ge on and with expert psychiatric support could make a judge react sympathetically as well, but his sympathy would be real. He added, ‘Both at once, I suppose. Traffic accident?’

  ‘No, they died when...’ the suspect began, then stopped as if he had almost said too much.

  Knowing that it would be useless to continue asking questions until the other had a chance to relax his guard, Michaelson nodded for Greer to make his report. While the Sergeant went through the preliminaries of setting the time and place, Michaelson studied the suspect more closely. There was something about his appearance which bothered him.

  Certainly it was not the suspect’s clothing, which had been neatly casual before Greer had treated their wearer like an opposing half-back. If anything the man was too conservatively dressed for his age and his hair was too short. That was it—his hair was unusually tidy and short. Not skinhead short but neat, combed and parted. Michaelson began to study the suspect’s face, closely.