Get Off the Unicorn (12 page)

“I'll do all I can to help you, Father,” Nora said finally, realizing that her parents were waiting for her answer.

Then she caught her mother's shining eyes, saw in them the approval, the assurance she wanted. She knew she was the daughter her mother had wanted.
That
made her happy.

 

 

Dull Drums

T
HE TROUBLE WITH
student-issue clothing was not its neutrality, thought Nora Fenn, but its instability. Did the suppliers think students doddered about the academic cloisters like pensioners? She fingered together the rent across her hip, hoping that no one would brush against her and widen the tear. She must have overstressed the fabric when she stamped out of Con's last night. Wouldn't you know it'd be on the left side, where her tights had run this morning?

Doggedly she continued along the pedestrian way, toward the Metropolis' Main Computer Block, twisting through and dodging clumps of slower-moving citizens.

It had been such an honor to qualify for the special Cybernetics course, given by Master Scholar Siffert himself, that Nora didn't mind the twenty-minute commute from the University Complex to the Computer Block no matter how the others in the class complained. (Not much suited them anyhow!) After nearly a year, she still reacted to the metropolitan life with added alertness. Just to walk the pedestrian ways, to look at the variety of faces and costumes and shops was a treat for a Farm Complexbred girl. She usually started for this class early so she'd have time to window-shop and people-watch. But today Con's mean words leapt about her mind.

“Yeah, you say you like people, Nora Fenn, but I never saw anyone communicate less in my life.”

“Just because I'm not always gibbering . . .” she'd said in self-defense.

Con had thrown back his head and howled. “The very notion of you . . .
you
. . . gibbering! May I be around to see the day!”

There was nothing wrong, Nora told herself stoutly, in taking pleasure in just being among people. You didn't have to participate actively . . .

But last night's scathing accusations rang in her ears.

“You can't be a parameter cloddie forever, Nora. You'll never really know what life is about until you start communicating and experiencing actively. And don't tell me you're in computer programming because that's your aptitude. That's your cop-out so you won't have to live and feel. If your Guidance Officer had wit one about him, he'd have phased you out of Computer Science, and shoved you into the Humanities. And opened wide holes in your father's home-brewed homilies.”

“
My
father . . .”

“Your father,” and Con was so incensed the cords stood out in his neck, “your father is a throwback to all the parental autocracies, the chauvinistic, narrow-minded, sex-blocked, inhibiting, maladjusting, martyrizing, egotistical, possessiveness that our present system of social harmony is supposed to correct!”

“How dare you say such things!”

“Because you have! Only you're still too much under your father's domineering influence to realize how much you resent him.”

“I don't resent my father. I understand his—”

“Understand?” Con threw his arms up in dramatic frustration. “Understand why he's refused to give you any decent credit allowance? By the printed circuits which feed us, every other Complex manager would do without so he could budget
something
for any youngster his unit can send on to Academic Advancement! And for a kid on
unlimited
Academic Advancement . . . Wake up, Nora. Your ever-loving father has never forgiven you, his daughter, much less the Educational Committee, for letting
you
go on to university instead of the male, his son, your brother.”

“I don't need credit allowances.” Nora tried to sound convincing, but she'd been hurt and confused by her father's parsimony. “I got an academic bonus of a hundred credits first term.”

Con shook his finger right under her nose.

“You can fool yourself, Nora Fenn, but you, sure as zero times zero is zero, don't fool me! Your paternal parent has royally screwed you, and why you persist in trying to prove you're worth his disdainful notice, even if you are female, I don't understand. He isn't worth the effort.”

Con had stepped forward then, his expression hard and angry as he grabbed her arms and gave her a good shaking. His manner was frighteningly different from the jovial, joke-cracking clown pose he usually affected.

“Abort the Computer courses, Nora. Get into Humanities. Take some Behavorial Psych. See objectively how futile it is to try and win your father over. And then grow up and live as Nora Fenn instead of George Fenn's unwanted female child.”

“Thank you, Connor Clarke, for your lecture and your advice. Send me the bill! But don't try my number. I'm writing you out of my program from now on.”

She had grabbed up her cloak and strode from his room, racing down the hall to the anti-grav shaft. She'd entered it fast—that's probably when she'd torn her tunic—and cried all the way down the a.g. shaft to her own level, cursing Con under her breath and desperately trying not to remember what he'd said.

But his words haunted her now as she walked into the shadow cast by the Computer Block. It was cold in the shade and Nora pulled her shabby cloak tighter around her. It had been the one piece of Complex-issue clothing she'd been able to bring with her. Not that her father had ever let his family use more than farm issue.

“No need to put credits into fancy fabrics and silly clothes you wear once a month. People should take us for what we are, not what we wear. It isn't needful for us to show our status.”

“Needful,” that was her father's operative word. What was needful was procured instantly, and ordered in the best quality, regardless of the cost. What was unnecessary was given scant consideration.

It hadn't been needful for Nora to have any credit allowance from the Fenn Farm Complex. She would, George Fenn had solemnly announced, have student quarters at the University Complex, adequate food since students did not eat subsistence-level but a high-calorie diet, and sufficient clothing to cover her decently. If Nora were as good a student as the Educational Committee (which had passed her for Advanced Study instead of her brother, Nick) had said, then she would earn credit bonuses with those brains of hers, wouldn't she? Privately, Nora had vowed she'd earn a bundle. And she had. But now she regretted her diplomacy—no, her subservient conciliatory gesture, as Con would say—in permitting her father to select a heavy CompSci program for her first year.

“That way you'll qualify as Computer Technician Grade II by spring instead of wasting your time on unnecessary trimmings,” her father had said.

What he meant, Nora knew now, was it wouldn't be needful for the Fenn complex to pay the salary of the Grade II Comptech for the spring planting.

Six months at University and Nora Fenn knew that she wouldn't be able to go back to the Farm. It wasn't simply the knowledge that her father's basic sociological orientation was limited, but the realization that she'd hated her existence there, from fattening geese to the tractor work that all the automation in the world couldn't make much less bone-jarring. The glitter of bright lights and vapid entertainments in the Metropolis didn't attract her half as much as the people: crowds, mobs, groups, the antithesis of the lonely Farm Complex with its rigid society, seasons, and the so-well-known personalities.

She was gregarious—but she didn't have to be garrulous the way Con was—to enjoy a group situation. She didn't need to maul people with sweaty hands: she could enjoy the sound of voices, the play of emotions on faces, the interaction of brand-new combinations.

Deep in thought, she arrived at the great Computer building. And crossed the magnificent inner hall without gawking at the famous sculpture depicting Man overpowering the Laeconia of Science. She passed but did not re-examine the tri-dex models reviewing the significant events leading to the Dicta—Ecology, Economy and Society—in which the technical sciences had swung violently to alleviate the crushing social problems and foster the conservation of dwindling natural resources. She marched quickly past the programming desk with its lines of applicants and petitioners.

Every citizen had the right to Bank-storage: every citizen could apply for additional space, for more programming time, for re-programming: that was as much their right as subsistence, shelter, and education. Free access had ended citizen fear of a computer-controlled society and had proved to the doubtful that science worked for man's good, not his extinction or domination.

Nora took the anti-grav shaft up to the storage banks where the class was being held, and despite her depressing reflections, she experienced that curious sense of elation, of purpose, that usually gripped her on the way to this course.

She knew that as a first-year student she was incredibly lucky to be in Research Scholar Siffert's special course. Master Siffert was
the
man in Computer Programming. Each student had to be especially recommended by his or her Mentor and then passed on by Siffert himself. (Nora had lost pounds anticipating her qualifying interview with the man.) Their integrity had to be above reproach because the course included lift-lock privileges. All the laboratory work involved the erasure of private records to clear storage for new use, but lift-lock privileges meant the student would have access to any records in the memory banks. Hence the care with which the candidates were chosen.

To clear obsolete records from the memory the students had to cross-check references in Housing and Obituary, audit the old text, and check a variety of items on income, profession, and free individual use of computer access: the last chore was to provide statistical data for a fair apportionment of storage space to citizens. Nora wasn't certain of the exact goal of the course, although she'd learned a lot from the labs about data retrieval and erasure. Research Scholar Siffert was known for his eccentric methods, but undoubtedly all would be clear in the final lecture.

The one aspect of the course she disliked was the attitude of the other students. Granted they'd all passed the same integrity clearance, but she did feel their approach to the lab work was improper. It had become the fashion to try and top each other with ridiculous anecdotes drawn from their auditing. Callous and cruel, Nora thought, to ridicule the dead for their shortcomings and human follies.

As she entered the Data Erasure room, she heard Larry Asher's inane, cawing laughter above the general chuckles.

“Haven't you heard any good ones, Fenn?” Asher asked her as she slipped into a chair.

She shook her head.

“Fenn apparently specializes in dull drums,” Clas Heineman said with a twitch of his lips for the pun.

“On the contrary,” Nora replied, raising her voice above the laughter as she remembered Con's jibes, “I've had some very interesting ones. But I don't think they're ludicrous.”

“Fenn also has no sense of humor,” Clas remarked with a rueful grin.

“Humor has nothing to do with your quips, Clas Heineman. It's easy to mock something you've not the sensitivity to appreciate.”

“Oho, Fenn's got opinions, too,” Larry Asher said, chortling over the verbal tiff brewing between the two. Heineman was not only an upperclassman, with a high scholastic average, but also one of the university's dominant personalities. “Tell us more, Fenn.”

Clas Heineman dared her, his eyes sparkling. The rest of the class waited, all too eager to see Heineman score her down.

She took a deep breath and stolidly addressed Heineman:

“What you don't appreciate, Clas Heineman, is what a panorama of the human condition you've been auditing.”

“Go on,” Clas said in that poisonously quiet tone she'd heard him use before he changed the state of some unwary underclassman.

“I know what you'd find hilarious—the woman who recorded her husband snoring so she could prove to him that he did. After he died, she'd have that played back every night so she could get to sleep.” Someone guffawed and she glared in his direction. “That isn't
funny
: it's human. So's the man who programmed a report of his luxury credit standing to wake him up every morning and put him to sleep at night. Then he won the Index Lottery and canceled the instructions. Or the fat woman who had the words ‘think thin' played back all day just below the audible level. It must have worked because three months later there's a stop-order. Of course, you're all so grand and well adjusted that you won't need to program such things. And all those would-be poets . . .
Why
are they so laughable?
You
all pinion your friends and make them listen to your sonnets. At least the dead poets only bored themselves!” She knew that the frustration and anger in her voice were not for the class alone but for her own personal situation. But she'd started to let go all those pent-up feelings. “And I'd just love to be around when someone, a hundred years from now, starts auditing your files. I wonder what will be risible to him.”

The smirks had faded from some faces, but Clas Heineman's smile remained as fixed as the glittering eyes he focused on her.

“And for all your scholastic honors, I don't think you've realized just what all these so-funny incidents show.”

“Since you're so acute, suppose you tell the rest of us obtuse clowns.” Heineman's voice was deadly now and Nora was suddenly as scared as she'd been when she confronted her father and insisted on her student rights.

“The subtle change of fear and suspicion of his neighbors to fear and suspicion of the computer-based society: then a gradual acceptance of computer-assistance. We all started with records beginning in 1990 when the main Comp banks were switched on in this Metropolis, so you should all see what I mean. By mid-century I noticed a definite drop in the incidence of recorded paranoia, and the incidence and repetition of psycho-chem therapy. It's noticeable because people begin inputting the most deeply intimate secrets. They've realized that no one can break a privacy seal . . . until we come along with our sophomoric mentalities.”