Savant (24 page)

Tobe let go of Metoo’s face, suddenly, and started rubbing the back of his right hand, where the tear had been, with the palm of his left. He went to the sink and ran the water, but was soon splashing it all over himself and the kitchen.

Metoo collected herself, and went to Tobe at the kitchen sink. She leaned past him as he backed away from her, and turned off the tap.

“I’ll run you a bath,” she said, as brightly as she could.

Tobe said nothing. Still rubbing his hands, he left the kitchen, and walked down the corridor to his own little room.

Metoo went to the bathroom, and began to run Tobe’s bath, relieved to have something practical to do. The tone sounded again. Metoo put her hand under the stream of water, running into the tub, to check that it was at the right temperature. Then she dried her hands and sorted out a towel and a robe, ready for when Tobe got out of his bath. The door to the bathroom was open, so that the bath could steam, happily, without causing condensation everywhere, and Metoo sat down to enjoy a moment’s peace, listening to the running water, and thinking about Tobe.

The tone sounded again.

Metoo turned off the tap, and made her way out of the bathroom. She turned when she heard footsteps behind her, and saw Tobe coming out of his room. She stopped to watch him. He was still wearing his robe.

Metoo waited for Tobe to start peeling his robe off over his head, as he usually did in his room, and, if not, always on his way to the bathroom. Before she had come to live with Tobe, Metoo had never seen a naked man, and it had taken her several weeks to get used to his total lack of self-consciousness. She had not given it a second thought for years.

Tobe went into the bathroom, still wearing his robe. She followed him back to the bathroom, just as he was closing the door.

Tobe never closed the bathroom door. He never closed any door. Tobe liked to be able to see the space around him, especially in the flat. The only door that was kept closed in the flat was the garden room door.

A Service tone sounded in the flat.

Metoo couldn’t think. She was tense, and everything around her seemed, suddenly, much less predictable than she was used to.

Pitu 3 was dead, and Metoo did not know what to think about that. A Medtech doctor and a Police Operator were hiding out in her garden room, and she didn’t know what to think about that. She was, effectively, in lockdown, because of something that Tobe was supposed to have done, and she didn’t know what it was. Tobe was acting out of character, or, out of his character at least.

Tobe appeared to be transforming into something approaching a normal person.

If all of that wasn’t enough for Metoo to deal with, the Service tone sounded again.

Metoo had to sign-in, or was it -out? She hardly knew any more.

S
AINTOUT AND
W
OOH
had spent more than five minutes rationalising what was going on: much, much more. The ramp-up was complete, and Wooh had been part of the process that had altered Code-status to Orange. Saintout was right, all the screens on the Service Floor, not to mention screens all over the World, were tuned in to Tobe, collecting his data in ever-increasing detail. More mind-hours than anyone could imagine were being devoted to assessing, manipulating and cross-checking data, and all of it was streaming from Tobe: one man, one Master, one Active.

The entire World of Service now revolved around Master Tobe.

Wooh did not need a view-screen in front of her face, or a bead in her ear; other people were doing that job. Wooh was on the ground, and she was a specialist, and Saintout was on the ground, and he was a specialist.

After many minutes, hours, even, spent discussing Tobe, they finally decided what they needed in order to make any real progress.

“You know what we need?” asked Saintout, smiling.

“Yeah,” said Wooh, “we need an expert. We need someone that can decode Tobe’s brainwave from the inside out, but, if he’s out there, you can be pretty sure that he’s already working on this particular problem.”

“It’s not a ‘he’,” said Saintout.

Wooh and Saintout visibly jumped as the garden room door crashed open with no warning, and Metoo bowled in on them.

When they had gathered their wits about them, and Metoo had closed the door behind her, Saintout was the first to speak. He looked at Wooh, and smiled.

“It’s not a ‘he’, it’s a ‘she’,” said Saintout, “and she’s not ‘out there’...”

“She’s in here,” said Wooh.

“What?” asked Metoo.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

H
ENDERSON TOOK THE
message that Pitu 3 had been found hanged, apparently by his own hand, and that the Student was an associate of Master Tobe’s and one of the last people to see him before his home isolation. He did not know what it meant for the Code status.

“Chen?” said Henderson.

“Yes, sir,” said Chen.

“No. It’s nothing,” said Henderson, pausing with his right elbow cupped in his left hand, and his right hand to his mouth.

“Not a good look, sir,” said Bob Goodman.

“What, Operator? Are you speaking to me?” asked Henderson.

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“What’s not a good look?”

“Classic defensive, concerned posture, and, if your legs are crossed, too, we’re really in trouble.”

Henderson uncrossed his feet and looked hard at the back of Goodman’s head.

“I can see your reflection on-screen,” said Bob.

“Why aren’t you looking at the screen?” asked Chen.

“I am,” said Bob, “that’s how I was able to see Operator Henderson’s posture.”

“Bob!” said Chen, shocked.

“What? Doesn’t everyone do that?”

“Are you telling me that you can monitor everything that’s going on on-screen, and still keep an eye on the Service Floor, via the screen reflections?”

“Can’t everyone?”

“No, Mr Goodman, they can’t,” said Henderson. “So, you know a little something about body language, do you?”

“It’s all part of the same thing. Looking at peoples’ heads on-screen is no different from having a person in front of you. The two can be read in much the same way.”

“Really?” asked Henderson.

“Sure. What? You didn’t know that?”

“I didn’t.”

“Me either,” said Chen.

“Anyone else?” asked Henderson.

There was quiet on the Service Floor, for a few seconds, and then Bob spoke again.

“I’m pretty sure the Operators are concentrating on what they’re doing. Put a request up on their screens.”

“I’ll be right back,” said Henderson.

W
ITHIN MINUTES OF
Henderson leaving the Service Floor, every Workstation on every Service Floor, in every College on the planet had a rolling questionnaire appearing on the left-hand side of its screen. There was no time to put together a brand new psychometric test for what Henderson was looking for, but it was possible to take one of the basic aptitude tests and insert questions from one of the personality tests used on infant and latent Actives. Individual scores wouldn’t be conclusive, but comparisons might prove interesting.

Branting began to get the results of the Operator tests through in less than thirty minutes.

Every Operator on the local College Service Floor was reviewing Master Tobe’s data, and one Workstation on every College Service Floor globally had also been given over to checking his output. The whole World was working on the problem. The whole World had to; by the time Code status had been ramped up to Orange, thousands of Students, Seniors and Assistants had ceased to function within their remits, hundreds of Companions were out of action, and more than two dozen Actives had been suspended, or had stopped processing.

The ever-changing mind threads that wove the synaptic Shield that kept the World safe and secret from the Universe were fraying; the warp and weft of the mental net was wearing away and perforating, and holes were beginning to appear in it.

Everyone knew about the domino effect. One domino falls, and others must follow suit, until all the dominoes have fallen. Everyone knew about ripples on a pond. Throw the tiniest of pebbles into the middle of a pool of water and the ripples will grow to fill the pool, water waving and splashing at its perimeter.

There had been no external view of the Shield for over a century. For the first hundred years of the College system, one, lone, stealth-satellite had monitored the Shield from beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, which was contained within the Shield. Some tumult in the solar system, which was never fully explained, had knocked the satellite out of orbit, and the only external eyes on the Shield were lost forever. The only way to monitor the integrity of the Shield, now, and for the past century, was to monitor the Actives. The Shield was invisible to Earth, but the Actives were alive and kicking, and could be housed, and controlled by Service Global.

Master Tobe, and his probability problem constituted the flick of the first domino, the pebble. The maths was out there, and as the ripples spread and grew they gained speed and momentum. There was no way to contain the problem. There was no way to plug the holes in the Shield, or weave the synaptic threads back together.

Qa had processed and input hundreds, maybe thousands of wafers, and the data never stopped coming.

The Operator tests came through as data, which needed to be translated into a graph.

“Let’s process this lot then, shall we, and see what the graph looks like?” asked Branting. “Obviously, we don’t have enough to do already.”

“Sir?” asked Qa.

“Sorry. I’m getting a little punchy, I know. I’m just going to sit for a minute.”

Branting’s advisors were on one of their short breaks, and he still had ten minutes to collect his thoughts. He sat down at the conference table and dropped his head, lacing his fingers together on the back of his neck. He could see his reflection in the shiny surface. Dropped over, his face was slack, and he barely looked like himself. He thought for a minute or two, and then said, “Qa, sit here for a minute.”

Qa got up from his seat in the alcove, and sat down next to Branting at the table.

“Sir?” he asked.

“Look down.”

Qa dropped his head onto his chest, misunderstanding his boss’s instruction.

“No, look down at the table. What can you see?”

“Oh,” said Qa, leaning over. “I see the table-top, and the reflections in it.”

“Yes, you do. Now look at me.” The two men lifted their heads and looked at each other.

“I don’t get it, sir,” said Qa.

“Try again,” said Branting.

Both men looked down into the mirror surface of the table. Branting watched the expression on Qa’s reflected face change. He put his hand on his shoulder, and said, “That’s right, Qa. What do you think of that?”

“I think it means you have to put together a new team,” said Qa.

“So, find me the people I’m looking for,” said Branting, almost smiling.

Branting put through an instruction to dismiss all his advisors, and sat on the dicky-seat at Qa’s Workstation.

“You can input the data here, right?” asked Branting.

“It’ll take a few minutes,” said Qa.

“Minutes, we have,” said Branting, “let’s just not take hours over this, okay?”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

T
HE QUARANTINE HAD
not proven effective, and it had probably contributed, to some degree, to the unease that seemed to pervade the atmosphere in every College in the World.

After close to a hundred hours, Patel and her teams were finally allowed to leave Tobe’s office building. They had completed their task in short order, but had not been allowed to leave their posts for another ten hours, and none of the material that they had painstakingly collected from Tobe’s room and collated, bagged up, documented and checked, had been removed from the building during the entire time they spent in the offices. Patel’s photographs were the only evidence that had made it back to Service.

The teams were demoralised; more than thirty hours of work had gone to waste, and another ten, sitting doing nothing had not improved their moods.