He sat down at a computer console, stared at the blank TV screen, and began typing in Wright's call numbers. The screen glowed and printed out the categories of stored information:
Graves stared at the categories with some distaste. It was disturbing that the government should have so much information on a private individual - particularly one who had committed no criminal act at any time.
Then on an impulse he pushed the `Wipe' button and the screen went blank. He typed in `Graves, John Norman', followed by his own call-up number. He sat back and watched the numbers print out on the screen:
He hesitated, then punched `Auth: VQ'
After another hesitation, he punched `Phelps, Richard D'.
RECORD CALL-UP NAME AS PHELPS, RICHARD D. FILE CONTENTS CANNOT BE DISPLAYED ON THIS CONSOLE TO THE ABOVENAMED PERSON. CALL-UP PERSON IS ADVISED TO ACQUIRE NTK AUTHORIZATION FROM DEPARTMENT HEAD.
Graves smiled. So even Phelps couldn't call up Graves' file without a special need-to-know authorization. Who could call it up? Feeling whimsical, he typed out `This is the President of the United States.'
The screen glowed:
Graves sighed. Computers just didn't show any respect. He pressed the `Wipe' button and returned to the question of Wright.
He didn't really know what he was looking for. Graves had supplied most of the computerized file contents himself. But perhaps someone else had added to it. He pushed the 008 sequence calling up miscellaneous information. That category had been empty two weeks ago. Now it contained an academic history of Wright's work in mathematics, prepared by `S. Vessen, State/Anal/412'. Whoever that was. He had a moment of pleasure at the thought that State's analysis people were abbreviated `anal'. It was fitting.
He turned to the information itself:
Graves stared at the screen. The notion of twocomponent interactions fascinated him. It seemed to have all sorts of connotations. He punched buttons and looked at the bibliography, which was not revealing. He looked at the abstracts of articles written by Wright. They were equally unrevealing. Then he saw that a final study was available: Apparently S. Vessen had applied a statistical analysis of his own to Wright's work.
Graves frowned, staring at the last word. Then he pressed the `Wipe' button a final time and hurried to catch his plane.
The aircraft banked steeply over the oil fields of Long Beach and headed south towards San Diego. Graves stared out the window, thinking of Wright's file. Then he thought about his own. He wondered what it looked like, the information displayed on the unblinking cathode-ray screen in sharp white easy-to-read block letters. He wondered how accurate it was, how fair, how honest, how kind.
Graves was thirty-six years old. He had worked for the government fifteen years - nearly half his life. That fact implied a dedication which had never been there; from the start his career in government had been a kind of accident.
In college Graves had studied subjects that interested him, whether they were practical or not. On the surface they seemed highly impracticaclass="underline" Russian literature and mathematics. He was drafted immediately after college and did push-ups for five weeks before somebody in the Army discovered what he knew. Then he was sent to the language school in Monterey, where he remained forty-eight hours - just long enough to be tested - before being flown to Washington.