Savant (10 page)

Part of the interview involved monitoring Pitu’s physical responses to the questions put to him, and to his answers. The Medic had taped sensors to Pitu’s chest and finger tips to monitor his heart-rate and breathing, and how much he was sweating, the plaited cord of wires running from the sensors to the small device that sat on the table next to Bello. Pitu 3 seemed very pleased with the equipment; at last he was being valued. At last, someone was taking notice of him... Everyone was taking notice of him.

Service Central was also uploading footage of the interview in real time, so that the process could be completed as quickly as possible, and the College could be brought back down to Code Green, at least.

“I’m pretty sure he did say something,” Pitu 3 said, “but you can check that on the footage, right?”

“Depends if you were in the corridor or already in the office,” Bello answered. “It’d be a big help if you could remember, son.”

Pitu 3 smiled slightly, and sat a little straighter in his chair, the sensor wires straining slightly.

“Oh, right, okay,” he said. “Let me see... He did say something, I’m sure. Maybe it was something to do with maths, maybe it was to do with a text book. That was it. I think he mentioned a book.”

Bello’s machine sensed that this information wasn’t accurate, but he continued with his questions; all the data would be decoded later.

“Did he always greet you the same way when you met?”

“Tobe? No, he didn’t talk much. He didn’t really speak to me. Oh, yeah, sometimes he said ‘tidings’ instead of ‘come in’. Yeah, he did that a lot,” said Pitu 3.

“So, you’re in the office?” prompted Bello.

“Yeah. He said to check out his footage, and gave me a time code for the morning. He said I should ask Metoo, so that’s what I did.

“I went over to Tobe’s flat, and Metoo signed me in to Service. We had a bit of a chat, and then I got to work with the material. I was thinking,
What are the odds of this happening?
I mean, he gave me my own calculation to do, real world. I guess he needed me to do it, so that he could figure out something else, or maybe my thing was a small part of his thing. Anyway, it was pretty cool.

“I went back to my room and got started on it. I was pretty pleased that he’d picked me for the assignment. It’s about time. I’ve been with him four years, you know?”

They did know.

Bello had uploaded Pitu 3’s profile before he’d entered the interview room. Every Drafted individual, however minor, however close to the margins of usefulness, underwent a series of psychometric tests before being placed at the College. Bello already knew that the interviewee liked to feel important, but didn’t like taking responsibility for anything. He knew that his observation skills were poor, but that he would happily switch facts around to fit the circumstances if there were gaps in his knowledge.

Bello also knew that Pitu 3 was more ambitious than he was talented, and more selfish than compassionate. None of this boded well for Pitu 3 becoming Tobe’s next Assistant. Pitu 3 appeared to be the only one not to have realised that, self-awareness being one of his lowest scored, measurable characteristics. He also scored a virtual zero for empathy. The one useful trait he had, in abundance, was his tendency to the literal. It was what had got him into Tobe’s class in the first instance. He was stolid in his thinking, lacked imagination, and didn’t work at an aggressive pace, so he was the perfect choice as one of the anchors in the class, giving Tobe the continuity he needed.

By extension, he did everything by the book, and never took a risk. Compared to the Student body, as a whole, he was 50 percent more likely to precipitate a Service Action. The benefit to Service, under Code Yellow, was that he was 70 percent more likely to be erroneous in his judgements and emotional responses. Service still hoped that the Code Yellow was an aberration.

“That was the day before yesterday. So, then some stuff was cancelled,” said Pitu, “and I didn’t get another tutorial until today. I was first, again, so I guess Service, or someone, messed about with the Schedule. I just thought Tobe was working on something. Everyone thought that.”

“Did you talk to any of Tobe’s other Students?” asked Bello.

“I had the job, I had the maths to do, and I did it, too, so I didn’t want any of them taking the credit,” said Pitu 3, becoming flustered, the machine responding more and more to the tensions in his body. “I didn’t want to let on that I knew anything. They were all talking, you know, but I just kept quiet. I’ve been Tobe’s Student for a long time, longer than anyone... almost. I didn’t think he was going nuts or anything.”

“By which you mean?” asked Bello.

“Yeah, sorry. I mean, I didn’t know there was anything wrong until that second tutorial. I just... he looked so...

“We’re trained, you know,” he said. “They train us to keep an eye on things. The Masters are important people, us Students look out for stuff. We spend time with them, more than anyone else, so we see things.”

“But you didn’t see anything at the first tutorial, two days ago?” asked Bello.

“No. Like I said, I just got on with what he told me to do. Then, when I went to the second 08:30 tutorial... well... You saw it,” he said, looking at Mudd. “There must be footage,” Pitu 3 insisted.

“What exactly do you remember about what you saw?” asked Bello.

Pitu 3 was leaning over the table, his arms outstretched across its surface, his chin almost touching the tabletop. He looked up at Bim, and said, “He opened the door. He didn’t look at me, or speak, or anything. He just opened the door and started to walk in. Only, he couldn’t walk because of all the stuff on the floor.

“It was weird. He was tiptoeing through all this stuff: pages from books, and equations all over the place. I couldn’t even tell what it was. It didn’t look right.

“We were trained,” he said. “We were taught to recognise when there was a problem, and he obviously had a problem.”

“So the Master was upset?” prompted Bello.

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Pitu 3, and then hesitated for a moment, before contradicting himself.

“Well, not exactly upset. More... I don’t know... It was weird. He was holding his robe and tiptoeing across the floor, only stepping on the bare linopro, and there was all this stuff. It wasn’t normal.”

“So was it the Master that was upsetting, or was it the state of his room?”

“You can never tell with him, anyway,” said Pitu 3. “None of them give much away. It’s not as if we really know what they’re like. It’s like they’ve got something missing, or something. You can tell what they’re thinking by what they’re doing, and he was doing weird stuff on the linopro. He wasn’t even using a pen. I don’t know what that yellow stuff was on the linopro, but it wasn’t right.”

“Did the room upset you, Pitu?” asked Bim.

“Yeah, I guess,” said Pitu 3, slightly sullen. “But if something’s wrong, we’re supposed to hit our buttons. That’s all I did. I just did what I was told.”

“We know, Pitu,” said Bim. “There’s nothing to worry about. Now, why don’t we get you over to the infirmary, and have you checked out properly? Then you can get some rest.”

Chapter Fifteen

R
ANKED
O
PERATOR
M
C
C
OLL
was tired. Strazinsky had to be tired. McColl looked up at the screen, at Agent Operator Henderson; he looked as fresh as the proverbial daisy, although McColl still wasn’t sure whether he reminded him of someone, and if so, whom.

McColl tried to glance at his watch, without drawing attention to himself. Agent Operator Henderson was halfway through asking a question, and couldn’t possibly notice what McColl was doing. It felt, to McColl, as if the interview had gone on for a long time; so many questions had been asked and answered. Several times, he had thought that Henderson had come to the end of his questions, but still they came, homing in on very small, very specific target areas.

“Yes,” said Named Operator Strazinsky in answer to the question.

“Are we keeping you, Ranked Operator McColl?” asked Agent Operator Henderson.

“Yes,” said McColl, looking directly at Henderson on the screen in front of him.

“No, sir. Sorry, sir,” said McColl, stumbling through the embarrassment brought on by his less than professional response. “Seriously, begging your pardon, Agent Operator Henderson, sir, I –”

“At ease,” said Agent Operator Henderson, cutting McColl off, casually, while he looked down at his own watch. When he looked up again, McColl was staggered to see that Henderson appeared to be smiling, even though the screen never showed a very distinct image, and expressions were almost impossible to read.

“It might interest you to know, McColl,” he said, “that your position as observer was required simply to make sure that we were getting as close to the truth as, if you’ll excuse the um... Well, as close to the truth as humanly possible. None of my questions to Strazinsky, and none of his answers could be validated without your presence.”

“Yes, sir,” said McColl. “Still, sir...”

“Don’t worry about it, McColl,” said Henderson. “If it’s any consolation, I was had in that style not once, but twice when I was Ranked, and one of those times was on Manoeuvres. I’m not sure I’ve lived it down, to this day. That’s why I worked my arse off to make Agent; I couldn’t take the mockery any longer.”

Henderson appeared to be smiling again, but it was still impossible to tell, for sure.

“That will be all,” he said.

As Agent Operator Henderson got out of his chair, the screen switched to drifting snow.

McColl and Strazinsky looked at each other, and sagged, visibly, with the relief of having got through the interview.

“Well, that could’ve been worse,” said McColl.

“Only for you,” said Strazinsky.

“Take your point,” said McColl. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t get a pat on the back at the end of all this, though. It sounds like you played it down the line.”

“Let’s get through whatever this is, first,” said Strazinsky, “before we start some kind of mutual appreciation society.”

“Yeah,” said McColl, wearily.

“Code Yellow,” said Strazinsky.

“Code Yellow,” said McColl. “It doesn’t look like they’re going to lift it, does it?”

“It doesn’t look like it, no,” said Strazinsky, “not if that interview was anything to go by.”

Chapter Sixteen

T
OBE TOOK UP
the pen for his wipe-wall, and stood at the far right hand corner of the room, closest to the window.

“It was the same,” he said.

“Tobe works in his office, not in his room.

“Tobe always works in his office.

“What is the probability of Tobe working in his office?”

He held
On Probability
, in his left hand, scrutinising the cover. It was a soft edition with graphics on the cover, of probability trees with fractions and percentages shown, in various type-sizes and fonts. He read the information on the front and back, and then looked at the book, quizzically. The information was wrong; it was jumbled and unclear, and misleading. Perhaps all the information in the book was wrong.

“Metoo,” he said.

A minute later, when there was no reply, Tobe stepped out through his bedroom door.

“Metoo,” he said, again.

This time, he heard the door of the garden room opening and closing, so he stayed where he was, on the threshold to his room. Metoo did not go into Tobe’s room when he was there. The door was always open, but Tobe still thought of it as his private domain when he was in the flat.

“Yes?” asked Metoo.

Tobe handed her the book, which she opened, and began to look at, thinking that he wanted to share an idea with her, which he still did, occasionally.

“The cover,” said Tobe. “Why is the cover wrong?”

Metoo flipped the book closed, her thumb acting like a bookmark somewhere in the text, and glanced at the cover. She looked from the cover of the book to Tobe, baffled.

“How is it wrong, Tobe?” she asked.

“The maths,” said Tobe.