“But they do,” Winfield said triumphantly. “Or they almost do. I’m building a primitive sonar torch in the prison rehabilitation center. At least, Ed Hogarth, who runs the center’s workshop, is building it under my direction. I can’t do the actual work myself, naturally.”
Tallon sighed resignedly. It looked as though Winfield’s conversation was made up of absurd statements and fantasy.
“You mean they don’t watch you in there? Don’t they mind that two of the government’s strictest injunctions are being broken with government equipment in a government establishment?”
Winfield rose noisily to his feet. “Son, you have an unfortunate skeptical attitude, but I’m going to assume that in less trying circumstances you are capable of civilized behavior. Come with me.”
“Where?”
“To the workshop. You have one or two surprises in store.”
Holding on to Winfield’s plump arm, Tallon followed him from the quadrangle, aware that his curiosity was aroused as he had never expected it to be again. Winfield moved confidently and quite quickly, tapping with his cane. As they walked a succession of men touched TalIon’s arm in sympathetic greeting, and one pushed a pack of cigarettes into his free hand. He struggled to keep his head up and walk boldly, but it was almost impossible, and he could, feel the fixed apologetic smile of a sightless man engraving itself on his face.
To reach the workshop of the rehabilitation center they had to pass the main prison building and walk two hundred yards to an auxiliary block. During the walk Winfield explained that his torch generated a narrow beam of inaudible high-frequency sound and had a receiver to pick up the echoes; an electronic device combined the outgoing and returning sounds. The idea was that the sound generator would sweep repeatedly from about 80 to 40 kilocycles a second, so that at any instant the outgoing signal would be at a slightly lower frequency than any of the echoes. Combining the two would produce a beat frequency proportional to the distance of any object in the torch’s beam and thus allow a blind man to build up a picture of his surroundings.
Winfield had partly worked out the theory, and partly remembered it from articles in old technomedical journals. Ed Hogarth, who apparently was a compulsive gadgeteer, had built him a prototype, but was having trouble with the electronics of the frequency-reduction stage, which should have rendered the high-pitched beats audible to the human ear.
As he listened, Tallon felt a growing respect for the old doctor, who seemed genuinely incapable of accepting defeat. They reached the rehabilitation center and stopped at the entrance.
“Just one thing before we go in, son. I want you to promise not to say anything to Ed about the real reason why I want the torch built. If he guessed, he would quit work on it immediately — to save me from myself, as the saying goes.”
Tallon said, “All right, but I want you to make me one promise in return. If you really do have an escape plan, don’t include me in it. If I ever decide to commit suicide I’ll pick an easier way.”
They went up a flight of stairs and into the workshop. Tallon identified it at once by the familiar smell of hot solder and stale cigarette smoke, a smell that had not changed since his student days.
“Are you there, Ed?” The echoes from Winfieid’s voice suggested the workshop was quite small. “I’ve brought a visitor.”
“I know you’ve brought a visitor,” a thin, irritable voice said from close by. “I can see him, can’t I? You’ve been blind so long you’ve begun to think nobody else can see.” The voice faded into barely audible swearing.
Winfield gave his booming laugh and whispered to Tallon, “Ed was born on this planet, but he was very active in the old Unionist movement at one time and didn’t have enough sense to quit when the Lutherians took over. He was arrested by Kreuger and suffered an unfortunate accident to his heels while trying to get free. There are quite a few of Kreuger’s prizes hopping about the Pavilion like birds.”
“And my ears are all right, too,” Hogarth’s voice warned.
“Ed, this is Sam Tallon — the man who almost finished Cherkassky. He’s an electronics expert, so perhaps you’ll get my torch working now.”
“I have a degree in electronics,” Tallon said. “That isn’t the same as being an expert.”
“But you’ll be able to get the bugs out of a simple frequency-reducer circuit,” Winfield said. “Here, feel this.”
He drew Tallon over to a bench and placed his hands on a complicated metal and plastic object about three feet square.
“Is that it?” Tallon explored the massive circuitry with his fingers. “What good is this thing to you? I thought you were talking about something you could carry in one hand.”
“It’s a model,” Hogarth snapped impatiently, “twenty times the size of the real instrument. That lets the doctor feel out what he thinks he’s doing, and I reproduce it in proper size. It’s a good idea, except it doesn’t work.”
“It’ll work now,” Winfield said confidently. “What do you say, son?”
Tallon thought it over. Winfield seemed to be a crazy old coot, and in all probability Hogarth was another, but in the brief time he had spent with them, he had almost forgotten about being blind. “I’ll help,” he said. “Have you materials to build two prototypes?”
Winfield squeezed his hand excitedly. “Don’t worry about that part, son. Helen will see we get all the parts we need.”
“Helen?”
“Yes. Helen Juste. She’s head of the rehabilitation center.”
“And she doesn’t object to your building this thing?”
“Object!” Winfield roared. “It was mainly her idea. She’s been behind the scheme from the start.”
Tallon shook his head in disbelief. “Isn’t that a strange thing for a senior government officer to do? Why should she risk appearing before the doctrinal synod just to help you?”
“There you go again, son — letting your concern for petty detail hinder the grand scheme. How should I know why she does it? Perhaps she likes my eyes; Dr. Heck tells me they’re a rather pretty shade of blue. Of course he’s prejudiced, since he made them himself.”
Both Winfield and Hogarth laughed extravagantly. Tallon put his hands on the blocky shape of the frequency-reducer model, where he could feel sunlight warming his skin. All his preconceived notions had been wrong. The life of a blind man was proving to be neither dull nor simple.
six
Tallon positioned the sonar torch carefully on his forehead, slipped the earpiece into his right ear, and switched on. He stood up, moved his head about experimentally, and began to walk. He was suddenly aware of how much he had gotten used to feeling his way with a cane.
The range of the torch was set for five yards, which meant anything beyond that distance would produce no echo. As he advanced he moved his head first horizontally, then vertically. The latter movement produced a tone that could be compared to an inverted vee as the sonar beam, now touching the ground, approached his feet and receded again.
Tallon forced himself to walk smoothly and steadily, giving all his attention to the rising and falling electronic tone. He had covered about ten yards when he began to pick up a tiny blip near the top of each vertical scan. Still walking, but more slowly now, he concentrated on the upper part of the sweep. The blip crept higher up the tonal scale with each appearance, and finally Tallon was able to convert it into a shrill steady note by inclining his head slightly downward.