THE PERSONIFICATION OF A TALENT
“So that’s how he managed it!” Hartz said, marveling. He stared at the shaven body in the steel chair as though he had never seen this man before. “I’d never have believed it possible to punch a whole new identity into the net from a domestic phone—certainly not without the help of a computer larger than he owned.”
“It’s a talent,” Freeman said, surveying the screens and lights on his console. “Compare it to the ability of a pianist, if you like. Back before tape, there were soloists who could carry twenty concerti in their heads, note-perfect, and could improvise for an hour on a four-note theme. That’s disappeared, much as poets no longer recite by the thousand lines the way they apparently could in Homer’s day. But it’s not especially remarkable.”
Hartz said after a moment, “Know something? I’ve seen a good few disturbing things, here at Tarnover, and been told about a great many more. But I don’t think anything has …” He had to force himself to utter the next words, but with a valiant effort he made the confession. “So frightened me as hearing you say that.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Why, calling this amazing talent ‘not especially remarkable’!”
“But it isn’t.” Freeman leaned back in his padded chair. “Not by our standards, at any rate.”
“That’s just it,” Hartz muttered. “Your standards. Sometimes they don’t seem altogether …”
“Human?”
Hartz nodded.
“Oh, but I assure you they are. We’re a very gifted species. Most of what we’re doing here is concerned with the recovery of talents we’ve neglected. We’ve been content to remain shockingly ignorant about some of our most precious mental resources. Until we’ve plugged those gaps in our knowledge, we can’t plan our path toward the future.” He glanced at his watch. “I think we’ve had enough for today. I’ll call the nurse and have him taken away for feeding and cleansing.”
“That worries me, too. Hearing you speak about him in—in such depersonalized terms. While I admire your thoroughness, your dedication, I have reservations about your methods.”
Freeman rose, stretching slightly as he did so to relieve his cramped limbs.
“We use those methods which we’ve found to work, Mr. Hartz. Moreover, please recall we’re dealing with a criminal, a deserter who, if he’d had the chance, would willingly have evolved into a traitor. There are other people engaged in projects similar to ours, and some of them are not just single-minded but downright brutal. I’m sure you wouldn’t wish people of that stamp to outstrip us.”
“Of course not,” Hartz said uncomfortably, running his finger around his collar as though it had suddenly grown too tight.
Freeman smiled. The effect was that of a black turnip-ghost.
“Shall I have the pleasure of your company tomorrow?”
“No, I have to get back to Washington. But—uh …”
“Yes?”
“What did he do after leaving Toledo in such a hurry?”
“Oh, he took a vacation. Very sensible. In fact, the best thing he could possibly have done.”
FOR PURPOSES OF RE-IDENTIFICATION
At present I am being Sandy (short, as I admit to people when I get stonkered and confidential, not for good old Alexander but for Lysander, of all things!) P. (worse yet, for Pericles!!!) Locke, aged thirty-two, swingle and in view of my beardless condition probably skew. However, I’m trying to give that up and might even consider getting married one of these years.
I shall remain Sandy Locke for a while at least, even after I finish my vacation at this resort hotel in the Georgia Sea Islands, medium-fashionable, not so boringly up-to-the-second as some even if it does boast an underwater wing for womb-retreat therapy and the manager is a graduate psychologist. At least there’s no obligatory experiential R&P.
It’s my second vacation this year and I shall take at least one further in late fall. But I’m among people who aren’t likely to mistake “taking another vacation” for “surpled and unemployable,” as some would that I can think of. Many of my fellow guests are taking their third this year already and plan to make the total five. These latter, though, are considerably older, shut of the care and cost of kids. To be a triple-vacationer at thirty-two marks me as a comer … in all three senses. Right now the third kind matters; I need a job.
I’ve picked a good age, not so difficult as forty-six to put on when you’re chronologically twenty-eight (the sudden recollection of spectacles! Ow!) and youthful enough to attract the middlers while being mature enough to impress the teeners. Memo to selves: could thirty-two be stretched until I’m actually, say, thirty-six? Keep eyes and ears ajar for data.
WINED AND DENIED
Past forty but not saying by how much, beautiful and apt to stay so for a long while yet, currently looking her best by reason of a bright brown tan, hair bleached by sun instead of shampoo, and an hour more sleep per night than she’d enjoyed for ages, Ina Grierson was also tough. Proof lay in the fact that she was heading the transient-executive recruitment dept at the Kansas City HQ of Ground-to-Space Industries Inc., world’s largest builders of orbital factories.
The question was, though: tough enough?
She thought of the old saying about being promoted to your level of incompetence—what was it called, the Peter-Pays-Paul Principle, or something like that?—and fumed and fretted. Her daughter kept declining to quit school, just signed up year after year for weirder and wilder courses of study (and all at the same university, for heaven’s sake! Wouldn’t be so bad if she’d consent to go someplace else). Ina felt tied, wanted to break away, move to the Gulf or Colorado or even the Bay Area, given that the slippage techniques were as efficient as the seismologists claimed and there wasn’t going to be another million-victim quake, not ever … or at least for fifty years.
On her own terms, of course—no one else’s.
Last year she’d rejected five offers. This year, so far only one. Next year?
Having a daughter out of step like Kate—hell! Why couldn’t the stupid slittie act normal like everybody else, dig up her roots and plug them in some other socket, preferably on a different continent?
If Anti-Trauma Inc. had started up soon enough …!
Tactless people sometimes wondered publicly why Ina insisted on remaining in the same city as her daughter who was, after all, twenty-two and had had her own apt since entering college and was not noticeably clinging or dependent. But Ina hated to be asked about that.
She never like being asked questions she couldn’t answer.
One week into her two-week vacation Ina wanted to be cheered up but the man she’d kept company with since arrival had left today. That meant dining alone. Worse and worse. Eventually, with much effort she put on her favorite red-and-gold evening gear and went to the open-air dining terrace where soft music mingled with the hush of waves. She felt a little better after two drinks. To put the regular sparkle back in her world, what about champagne?
And a minute later she was shouting at the waiter (this being an expensive and exclusive establishment instead of the cast-from-a-mold type where you dealt always with machines that kept going wrong … not that human beings were immune from that): “What the hell do you mean, there isn’t any?”
Her shrill voice caused heads to turn.
“That gentleman over there”—pointing—“just ordered the last bottle we have in stock.”
“Call the manager!”
Who came, and explained with regret that was probably unfeigned (who likes to find his pride and joy deeveed by a mere bunch of circuitry?) why there was nothing he could do. The computer in charge of resources utilization at the HQ of the chain controlling this and a hundred other hotels had decided to allot what champagne was available to resorts where it could be sold at twice the price the traffic in the Sea Islands could bear. The decision was today’s. Tomorrow the wine list would have been reprinted.