Scharn pursed her lips tightly. She still didn't like what had been done to Tomo... but her immediate responsibility was not for his past but for his present. And if he posed any danger to either himself or the station... "Do you have anything like a standard psych profile for the mainters as a group?" she asked.
Halian's response was to reach for his desk's control ball, fingering the classified-access section. "We've got both that and Tomo's own last profile."
"Good," Scharn said. "I'd also like any previous readings on Tomo that you might have."
Halians screen lit up with lines of print, and he swiveled it to face her. "I'll have the Goldenrod's computer send us up a complete dump. In the meantime, here's the general mainter profile."
Putting her feelings on standby, Scharn began to read.
—
It had been nearly an hour since the others had left him; long enough for Tomo's panic to have subsided into emotional fatigue and then resurface as restlessness. Scharn had said they would talk again later, a statement that could qualify as either a promise or a threat. Whichever, he wished they would hurry up and get on with it. Waiting like this was worse than docking—then, at least, Max could keep him informed as to what was happening. Here at the port, they were both in the dark.
Or were they? "Max?" he called impulsively, sliding into the desk chair.
"Yes, Tomo?"
Just as quickly, he recognized the absurdity of what he'd been about to ask. "Oh, never mind. Um... how's the unloading going?"
"Unloading and refurbishing operations are proceeding smoothly. Is there anything I can get for you?"
"No, no. I'm just—I'm fine."
"I see." Max paused. "Tomo, would you mind coming back aboard ship for a few minutes? There's no one in your pod at the moment."
Tomo frowned. "Why?"
"Your tone of voice indicates stress. My biosensors can't take readings outside the ship." "I'm all right, Max," Tomo snapped. "Why is everybody so interested in me all of a sudden? The second I get here Halian calls me up, then he smothers me in doctors, and now you—"
He broke off abruptly, seeing for the first time the pattern there. But how...? "Did you tell them that I was talking about going dirtside?" he asked suspiciously. The computer remained silent. "Max! Answer me!"
"Tomo, I had no choice. I cannot keep secret information that indicates you may be suffering physical or emotional dysfunction. Under such conditions I must report my findings in coded form to a company grade-one executive as soon as possible—"
"Wait a second. What physical or emotional dysfunction?"
There was a short pause. "Your thoughts about a planetward trip were judged to be four sigma outside normal range. A two-sigma deviation is considered—"
"Max, how many times do I have to tell you that there's nothing significant about that?" Tomo snarled, barely controlling his anger. This whole thing was becoming ridiculous. "Why are you making such a major operation out of it?"
Max's answer, when it finally came, was a complete surprise. "I'm sorry; I cannot continue this discussion."
Tomo's anger vanished into puzzlement and a slowly growing uneasiness. "What is it, something I'm not supposed to know?"
"My programming requires me to protect your emotional well-being. There are certain topics of discussion which would unduly distress you, such as descriptions of warfare or—"
"But this is something a lot more personal than warfare, isn't it?" Tomo interrupted, blocking Max's attempt to sidetrack the conversation. "Something having to do with my physical or psychological makeup, right?"
"I'm sorry; I cannot continue this discussion."
Aha, Tomo thought. For a moment he gazed into space, searching for a usable loophole. "All right. The information might—might—bother me. Correct?"
"I'm sorry; I cannot—"
"Shut up! It might bother me—but now that I know something's wrong with me, the uncertainty is definitely bothering me." He paused, but Max remained silent. "The tension alone—you know better than I do what prolonged tension does to blood sugar and adrenaline levels. Did your programmers anticipate this kind of situation?"
"They did," Max said in resignation. "Very well, then, but the information must be kept secret from the Goldenrod's other mainters."
"Agreed. So?"
"In order to endure the solitude of starship service, you have undergone a kind of mental conditioning which has made you less dependent than the average person on social interaction."
For several heartbeats Tomo just sat there, attempting to assimilate the rightangle turn his private universe had just taken. Egocentrism, he thought through the numbness. The assumption that you are basically the norm. He'd known the people on planets and ports were different; but somehow he'd never considered the possibility that he was the odd one. And to have been deliberately made this way... "How much less dependent?" he asked.
"It allows you to spend long periods of time alone, which is necessary for your job." Max's voice was soothing, as if he were doing his best to soften the shock. But his best wasn't very good. "But it also makes it extremely difficult for you to interact with others at close range."
"So because I wanted to do something you didn't think I could do, you slapped a 'dysfunction' marker on me and yelled to the authorities." The mental numbness was fading now, anger once more rising to take its place. "Is that it?"
"It has nothing to do with what I personally think," Max protested. "Your conditioning places specific limitations on your actions, limitations as laser-cut and well defined as—"
"As your own programming?"
"I wouldn't have put it quite that way—"
"But that's what you were thinking, wasn't it? Well, I've got fresh input for you. You may be defined down to twelve decimals, but I am not. I'm a human being, and I can do anything any other human being can do."
"Tomo, your vocal stress levels are becoming—"
Tomo cut him off with a well-aimed slash at the control ball. Getting to his feet, he stomped over to the exit door. For a moment he stood there, anger battling common sense for supremacy. But the anger was far stronger. Slapping the touch plate, he stepped out into the port corridor. This time, no one was in sight. Picking a direction, he started off, determined to find his way to Halian's office. Halian, Scharn, Ross, even Max: he'd show all of them.
—
The deviation between the two curves was small—well within the one-sigma accepted tolerance—but with the advantages of hindsight it was obvious to Scharn that that was where it had begun. "Right there," she told Halian and Ross, tapping the spot on the screen. "You can see the slip starting to form as early as a year ago."
"Too small a change for the MX to key on," Ross muttered.
"I wasn't blaming the MX," Scharn said, leaning back in her chair. "And it brings up an interesting question. Is Tomo becoming mentally unbalanced, or is his genetic programming somehow unraveling and allowing his personality to drift more toward human norms?"
"How could it do that?" Halian asked. "A genetic effect like that should be permanent."
Scharn shrugged. "In theory, so should damage to a section of mature brain. But stroke and accident victims routinely regain lost functions as the neural pathways restructure themselves. Perhaps some combination of hormones and neurotransmitters is acting to counteract the genetic bias here."
Halian harrumphed. "I don't buy that. Anyway, I can't see that it makes any practical difference—"
"Of course it makes a difference," Scharn shot back. "In the first case he's ill and can probably be treated with some form of chemo-imbalance correction. In the second, though, what we actually have is a rapid version of personality evolution, which is not only normal but could be dangerous to suppress artificially."