But the baritone was dead—suicide—and knowing that made it almost intolerable.
“I know your books, Mr. Mulligan,” Shalmaneser said. “Also I have stored several TV interviews with you. I recognise your appearance and voice.”
“I’m flattered.” Chad dropped into a chair facing the mike and the battery of cameras trained around it. “Well, I gather you don’t have much time for idle conversation, so I’ll come straight to the point. Cue: what’s wrong with the Beninia project?”
“It won’t work,” Shalmaneser said.
Norman stole a glance at Rex. It was impossible to tell by looking whether the man’s agitated condition was due to Chad’s nonchalance or to the knowledge that using Shalmaneser in this fashion slowed his lightning reactions to a level close to the human, wasting precious time. Giving a machine the power to talk in ordinary English had meant funnelling everything through subsidiary installations which worked at less than a thousandth of the speed of light-writers.
“Cue: why not?” Chad said.
“The data given to me include unacceptable anomalies.”
“Cue: would it be fair to say you don’t believe in what you’ve been told about Beninia?”
There was a measurable pause. Rex took half a pace forward and started to say something about anthropocentric concepts compelling Shalmaneser to search his entire memory-banks.
“Yes. I don’t believe it,” the artificial voice announced.
“Hmmm…” Chad plucked at his beard. “Cue: what elements of the data are unacceptable? Be maximally specific.”
Another, longer pause, as Shalmaneser examined everything he had ever been told which referred to the subject and discarded all but the most essential items.
“The human elements concerned with social interaction,” he said at length. “Next, the—”
“Hold!” Chad snapped. Once more he tangled his fingers in his beard and tugged at it. “Cue: have you been taught the Shinka language?”
“Yes.”
“Cue: is its given vocabulary among the anomalies that cause you to reject the data?”
“Yes.”
All around, technicians began to exchange astonished stares. One or two of them dared to sketch a smile.
“Cue: are the living conditions described to you as obtaining in Beninia of a kind which lead you to expect different behaviour from the people there from what you’ve been told?”
“Yes.”
“Cue: is the political relationship between Beninia and its neighbouring countries another of the anomalies?”
“Yes.” Immediately—no delay.
“Cue: is the internal political structure of the country also anomalous?”
“Yes.”
“Cue: with maximal specificity define your use of the term ‘anomalous’.”
“Antonym: consistent. Synonym: inconsistent. Related concepts: congruity, identity—”
“Hold!” Chad bit his lip. “Sheeting hole, that was a bad choice of approach … Ah, I think I see how I can … Shal, cue this one: does the anomaly lie in the data given to you with direct reference to Beninia, or does it only become apparent when you’re dealing with Beninia in relation to other countries?”
“The latter. In the former case the anomaly is of the order which I am allowed to accept for the sake of argument.”
“Whoinole is that codder, anyway?” someone asked in hearing of Norman.
“Chad Mulligan,” someone whispered back, and the first speaker’s eyes grew wide.
“Evaluate this, then,” Chad said, frowning tremendously and staring at nothing. “Postulate that the data given you about Beninia are true. Cue: what would be necessary to reconcile them with everything else you know? In other words, what extra assumption do you have to make in order to accept and believe in Beninia?”
Rex jerked forward another half-pace like a marionette, his mouth open. All around the vault, which was now in dead silence except for the echo of Chad’s voice and the soft humming of Shalmaneser’s mental processes, Norman saw jaws drop correspondingly.
Obvious!
The pause, though, stretched, and stretched, until it was intolerable. One more second, Norman thought, and he was going to scream. And—
“That a force of unknown nature is acting on the population and causing them to behave differently from known patterns of human reaction under comparable circumstances elsewhere.”
“Shal,” Chad said softly, “such a force exists, and is at present being investigated by experts to determine its nature. I tell you three times!”
He spun his chair through half a circle and got to his feet. It was only then that Norman saw how, despite the chill in the vault, he was running with sweat and sparkling drops of it were forming on the ends of his beard.
“All right,” he said wearily. “Try him now.”
The tension snapped. Someone Norman didn’t know darted forward to the chair Chad had vacated and hurled a question into the mike. The answer came back: “The estimated return for the Beninia project will be—”
“Hold!”
The man looked at Rex. “I think he’s done it, sir,” he exclaimed.
“Someone get me a drink!” said Chad Mulligan.
tracking with closeups (26)
ALL IN DUE TIME
The banked machines playing over the tape-recorded reports of the Metropolitan Police prowl-cars for the past twelve hours—mainly for the benefit of the computer responsible for crime-prevention—made a note of a particular section on a particular spool and shortly afterwards sent it, flagged with a code-number, to a detective sergeant in the Analytical Department.
The code ran 95 (eugenic infraction)—16 (drug trafficking)—01 (female)—22 (probable age)—01 (applicable to a single individual).
Quirking his mouth at the idea of a eugenic infraction being the responsibility of a single individual, the sergeant spun the report-tape forward to the appropriate point, already knowing what to expect: a shiggy in a state of unmistakable pregnancy had been observed orbiting on some psychedelic or other, and just in case it was Yaginol the matter ought to be looked into.
The sergeant, as part of his training, had been shown a few Yaginol-induced foetuses. Some of them had made members of the course under instruction vomit. He himself had managed to restrain the impulse, but if he had a nightmare nowadays he imagined himself the father of such a monster, lacking eyes, or limbs, or perhaps worst of all the entire brain, the skull being open at the fontanelle to show that inside there was nothing but air.
* * *
From now on, the doctor said, she had to be consistent. She would have to put up with the cyclothymic variations which normally would have indicated it was time to shift from Skulbustium to something else—Yaginol, for a man or a shiggy who wasn’t pregnant, Triptine for one who was. Triptine was better than Skulbustium, the hitrip not being so dependent on the groundmood, but Skulbustium was much easier to come by and the whole idea was to bring into the world a baby who would never see the ordinary, drab, loathsome city called London, but always the private wonderland where Poppy spent her life. So when the doctor said she must choose something and stick to it until the child was born, she chose Skulbustium for fear supplies of Triptine might be interrupted. It was still fairly new, and she didn’t know anyone who was homecooking it yet.
But it was bad on the days when her normal glandular rhythms cycled towards depression.
When the police came to the tall apartment block where she shared a flat with Roger and another couple named Sue and Ted, she was in a down phase.
The two constables who paid the call weren’t interested in making work for themselves. They said so in as many words to Ted, who answered the door, and most people wouldn’t have expected otherwise. At worst, a bloody-minded fuzzy-wuzzy would sniff the air and tell you to come along and there’d be a fine which was a nuisance and you’d have to stretch your credit for the next lift. Today, even that wasn’t on the programme. All they wanted was to make certain a pregnant girl, known to the Eugenics Board and answering the description in the report from the prowl-car, wasn’t using Yaginol and threatening to visit a handicapped child on the community.