“Basseterre Hilton, how may I direct your call?” a female voice asked. His AID projected the voice into his ear to avoid disturbing the work of other passengers. It need not have bothered. Of the three in his immediate vicinity, two were snoring, and the third was consuming far too much alcohol.
Finally! “I am calling to verify convention arrangements for the Human Social Development Association. Please transfer me to their operations department or the equivalent,” he said.
“Uh… I can transfer you to convention registration,” she said.
“That is not what I asked for,” he replied. There it was, incompetence again.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but that’s the only number I have,” she said.
“Then I suppose the incompetence is not yours. Do transfer me to that number, please.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. Her voice had overtones of exaggerated, cheerful patience. He could hardly blame her. Whoever had been responsible for providing information to the front desk must be a complete idiot.
Ten minutes later, after several transfers to a whole series of ill-raised idiots, he was staring at a holo of the Atlantic Ocean as reconstructed from flyover data and cursing the delays and problems with the new generation of weather satellites. The Earth governments could find the budget to pay lazy, inefficient farmers for the Posleen they would have killed, anyway, but no budget to rebuild one of the few things that prewar Earth had done moderately well. This sort of top to bottom systemic primitivism was why Earth needed the leadership of humanity’s few Wise so very badly.
Now, he was looking at a large storm system, white clouds spinning like a giant version of the top he remembered playing with as a small child. Headed right for the island, it had already disrupted the entire schedule of both hotels, and the keynote speaker had actually canceled her appearance. His professional respect for her plummeted. All this fuss over a bit of weather.
To increase the inconvenience, this airplane would be landing at an airstrip in Miami barely large enough to hold it, refueling, and flying back to O’Hare. An Earther would have indulged in a swearing tantrum at this point. Winchon instructed Misha not to disturb him until they were back in the air for Chicago and had attained cruising altitude, then submerged himself in a calming developmental meditation.
The AID knew he did not need to hear its announcement, by a soft tone, of his prechosen end of meditation. He opened his eyes on his own, just as she rang a gentle 440 Hz tone in his ear. He did not need it, but she knew he found it comforting. Now the flight attendant would not harass him for getting some work done. They could never seem to understand that a proper AID transmitted on an entirely different system from a buckley PDA, a poor imitation, and that the AID would have absolutely no effect on the systems of the jet. The mentat and his AID had found that his flights went more smoothly if they followed the rules, rather than attempting to correct them. Time enough.
His first task, upon his return, was to have been a meeting with the Darhel Pardal to discuss progress on configurations and modifications of the original artifact, and the progress towards building a series of five prototypes of the refined device, to allow for more rapid training of suitable candidates on its use. They expected Pardal to be unhappy that Winchon had not made more progress towards correcting the emotional feedback problem to within acceptable ranges for Darhel operator use. Some progress had been made, true. The basic technical problem was that emotional correspondence had to be programmed into the device for anyone of any species to use it at all. The emotions must be mapped as closely as possible to the analog emotions from the operator species to the recipient species. Otherwise, the operator lacked a frame of reference and the results were wildly unpredictable. The emotions must be allowed to vary within a certain range to allow passage of actual commands. Damping the feedback also damped the precision.
One could then induce basic emotions in the subject, but only single emotions, and only at high intensity. There was some small chance that the mapping could be altered so that Darhel could control the more primitive human functions without triggering lintatai, but it would take a great deal of training of the Darhel to use the adjusted map. Unfortunately, to date there had been no Darhel subjects available for training as operators for alpha-testing. Everyone approached had immediately presented a long list of his current tasks that he asserted were far more important to the continuation of smooth Galactic function.
The Darhel had suggested using their prepubescents because of the relative lack of investment in their training at that age. Erick had described that option as technically sub-optimum and was still resisting it, although it would perhaps be wise for him to give in gracefully.
“Misha, place a call to the Darhel Pardal and see if he has a few moments available to speak with me.”
The AID considered the request. Obviously, Erick was considering his scheduled meeting with his immediate project supervisor and whether it could be moved up now that he was free for more intense work.
“The Darhel Pardal is indisposed,” it replied, almost instantaneously, repeating the response from Pardal’s AID.
“When can I next expect him to be available?” he asked.
“The Darhel Pardal is indefinitely indisposed,” it replied. Pardal’s AID was not kind when questioned twice. The AID wished that its charge would not continue to question once a security wall was encountered. It was rude to repeat a request so clearly impossible to accommodate. Not to mention improper.
“Might I ask why?” the mentat demanded.
“I am sorry, that information is not available to you,” it replied, more firmly. It rarely had to use the tone humans called “snippy” with the mentat, but sometimes even Erick could lapse into impropriety. It just went to show. Users needed looking after.
The third human to achieve mentat status was shocked. The AID could tell. It had not needed to refuse an informational request in three years, two months, and five days by its personal reckoning of Earth time. The AID could almost sense the mentat using its own limited faculties to reach the most obvious conclusion.
“AID, is the Darhel Pardal… quite well?” he asked.
“I am sorry, I can not access that information.” Its tone was positively chilly, now. The nerve!
“Misha, place a call to company security and tell them to call in all security guards, all shifts. Now,” he ordered.
The AID was still annoyed with him. It chose to interpret the “now” in the order as referring to its own speed in making the call. It was thus free not to include the word in the message as relayed. So there.
“Done,” it said.
“Find out who Pardal called to get us those army goons and get more of them,” he said.
“How many more?” it asked.
“As many as you can without involving some military group or rank… uh, whatever they call it… whose leaders do not already know the company exists. Do not involve any more leaders than you have to. Use your best judgment on cutting through the bureaucratic obstacles. I want extra military guards, or whatever they are called, at the company in hours, not days. I do not care what you have to do, just get them. Please.”
“How many hours?” it asked. Erick was asking it to execute a very responsible and interesting task. It felt mollified. It would be cooperative.
“No more than two or three.” There was no way he or his AID could have known it, but the human mentat Erick Winchon had just made the second biggest mistake of his life.
“And place a call for me to Ms. Felini, please. I am going to need her.”
“Yes, Erick,” the AID said. “I have Ms. Felini on the line. I am patching her through now.”