Savant (8 page)

As Tobe crossed the office threshold, Metoo reached out and placed a hand on either side of his face. His eyes were cast down.

“Thank you, Tobe,” she said. “Now, let’s go home.” She turned him as she spoke, still holding his face, so that his vision was, effectively blinkered. They were soon walking down the corridor away from the office, with Saintout at a discreet distance behind them. Tobe had not seen any of the Service Operators.

The Operators on either side of the office door turned to face each other, and then turned to face into the room.

“Bloody hell,” said the man on the left.

S
AINTOUT ESCORTED
T
OBE
and Metoo back to the flat, and waited outside. Metoo set the bath to run, and told Tobe to undress. He went to his room, and she ducked back into the corridor to speak to Saintout.

“Thank you,” she said. “I think he’ll be fine now.”

“I’m sorry, Assistant-Companion,” said Saintout, “but I’ve been assigned, and I’m not going anywhere. By rights, I should be in that flat with you. In fact, Assistant-Companion, I must insist that I accompany you back into the flat.”

Metoo looked at him.

“Now,” said Saintout.

Metoo would not jeopardise Tobe’s work or life by having someone, anyone, come into the flat while he was there. From time to time, a Student would come in, usually for something to do with Service, but she always ensured that their visits happened when Tobe was in his office. Since he kept to a fairly rigid timetable, and, since he tended to work longer hours than Students, their visits had never been a problem. It helped enormously that Tobe was a creature of habit. He had established routines, and he hated to deviate from them. Leaving his office so early in the day, today, would cause enough trouble. There was no way that Metoo was going to allow Saintout to walk into the flat.

Saintout, however, was insistent.

T
OBE WALKED, NAKED
, to the bathroom, leaving the door open as he stepped into the bath and sat down in the water that was still running.

Metoo went to the closed door of the Companion’s room, opened it, barely far enough to let her pass through, and closed it quietly behind her. She crossed the room to the window, without looking at any of her plants. She opened the window as wide as she could, and stuck her head out.

“You really ought to be careful of that, Assistant-Companion,” said Saintout, who was standing with his back to the wall adjacent to the window.

“I didn’t think you were there,” said Metoo, clutching her chest with the shock of suddenly hearing Saintout outside the window, before she saw him.

“I was told, most emphatically, that I must not be seen by the subject, Assistant-Companion,” said Saintout.

Metoo didn’t answer him. She knew he was being amusing for her benefit, but none of this was funny; she needed to be particularly vigilant with Tobe. Things had not been going well for days, since the stupid sock thing, and she had no idea what the fallout would be.

Colleges were set up with the sole purpose of catering to the upper echelons of the Drafted, which, basically, meant the Masters, since no one ever knew who was Active. Things did not go wrong. Companions kept their Masters’ home-lives simple and regulated, with specific reference to their individual personality maps. Assistants did a similar job in the Masters’ offices. Beyond that, Students were Scheduled according to their Masters’ needs, and Service was on hand at all times to monitor everything.

She had asked more than a dozen times in the past two days, “Anomalies?” They had answered, “Minor and monitoring”. What the hell was going on?

Tobe was in the bath, and Saintout was in the Companion’s room. Metoo signed into Service.

“Anomalies?” she asked.

There was no answer.

“Anomaly status on Master Tobe?”

“Thank you for signing in,” said Service. “Service will resume shortly.”

Metoo sat, rigid, for several seconds. She could hear Tobe in the bath. She had never known him to take a long bath, so she didn’t have much time. She wondered, for a moment, whether she had remembered to put out a towel and a robe for him. Why did she wonder? Of course she had.

Metoo willed herself to stay where she was. Tobe was fine; that was all that mattered. So long as Saintout was in the garden room, and did not do anything stupid, Tobe would be quite happy pottering about. He would not wonder, for a moment, what she was doing signed in to Service. He didn’t care about Service. It struck Metoo how odd it was that Service watched Tobe’s every move, while he totally ignored its very existence. He had everything he needed, and he did not need Service. Service needed him.

“Anomaly status on Master Tobe?” she asked.

Service buzzed faintly for a moment or two, as if with very distant static.

Metoo’s hands were sweating slightly, and her eyes were big in her face, again.

“Anomalies?” she asked, so short of breath that she could not repeat the entire formal request.

Service buzzed again. Then she realised that it wasn’t buzzing at all, but that her aural acuity was heightened, just as her visual acuity had been heightened when Tobe had been in the garden room, yesterday morning, and she had watched the droplet of water fall on his forehead.

Tobe had been in the garden room.

Metoo’s temperature rose, instantaneously, and her skin began to prickle with a sheen of cold sweat.

Metoo heard Tobe step out of the bath.

Tobe had been in the garden room. He had been there once, and so he might go there again. Something must have mattered to him very much for him to enter the room for the first time. If the thought occurred to him again, it would be much easier for him to enter the garden room a second time.

Metoo found herself in the corridor outside the bathroom. She watched as Tobe, his back to her, dropped the towel and threw the robe over his head. He turned to face her.

“Come into the kitchen and have a cup of tea,” said Metoo. She tried to hold down her panic so that he wouldn’t see it, while knowing, all the time, that he had never been able to read her face; she was in no danger of being caught with her feelings.

They walked to the kitchen together, and Tobe sat on his stool, while Metoo began to make the tea. The initial rush of adrenalin had subsided. Tobe was safe, and, apparently, oblivious.

“M
ODERATE AND MONITORING,
” said Service, to empty air.

Chapter Twelve

S
ERVICE SENT TWO
Techs to Tobe’s room. There had been a long discussion, first between the Operators who had guarded the door, during Tobe’s extraction, and then between the three Ranked Operators, who had been brought in from Repast, Recreation and Rest, mobilising the entire Service team, for the College, at Ranked level. McColl was still observing for Strazinsky, and Ranked Operator Dudley was manning Station 2, alongside the Named Operator that had replaced Strazinsky.

The three Ranked Operators could not come to a unanimous decision about what to do with Tobe’s office, so they called in Service Central.

The two Techs stood outside Tobe’s room for over an hour, alongside the Operators, who were guarding the entrance. No one went in or out. The door remained open, and the four men standing in the corridor outside barely dared to breathe.

A decision was made. Service Central was already reviewing footage, various sections being worked on simultaneously, so that the procedure could be completed in the shortest possible time.

The Techs were sent in.

After two or three minutes watching the Techs wrangling with each other, trying to decide who should enter the room, one of the Operators stepped towards them.

“The little bloke goes in,” he said.

The Techs looked at the Operator, who had said less than any of them during the tense hour they had been together, and had claimed to have no opinion as to what should be done.

“Stands to reason,” he said. “Small feet, less likely to make a mess of what’s there.”

The smaller of the Techs, who had ‘Estefan’ stencilled on the back of his regulation overalls, unlaced his work boots, and, using the toe of the other foot, against the back of the boot, removed them, without having cause to use his hands. It was mandatory for Techs to have clean dry hands when they were working, and they all developed habits relating to their hands, either rituals or shortcuts, depending on their personalities. Estefan preferred shortcuts; another Tech might take his boots off with his hands because the last thing he would do before starting a job would be to wash his hands, regardless of whether they were clean.

Despite not touching his boots, Estefan took a vacuum sealed pack from his pocket, opened it, and wiped his hands with the alcohol swab inside, dropping the pack and the swab, where he stood, when he had finished using them.

Estefan’s socks were too white to be cotton. Techs were allowed to Requisition clothes made from natural fibres, even though they were rare and came at a price, because of the ingrained habits passed down through generations. Old, manmade fibres had been prone to static electricity, and could cause excess sweating, neither of which was compatible with old electronics. Many Techs were still superstitious about natural fibres, and would rather wear them beyond the point of decency than switch to pro. Modern Tech, even the knackered obsolete stuff that most Techs had to work with was not sensitive to foreign bodies, including dust and liquids, and all electrical components were self-insulating at the molecular level. Estefan had no qualms about wearing pro, and preferred to spend his Requisites on other things.

Estefan turned to the Operator.

“I’ll leave my socks on, if it’s okay with you,” he said. He wasn’t asking.

“Fine,” said the Operator.

The other Tech erected a mini-crane in the corridor outside Tobe’s office, to transfer hardware into the room without having to walk back and forth, and Estefan found his way across the linopro, following in the Master’s footprints.

Estefan reached the compress button on the wipe-wall, hit it, and waited to see what would come out of the mini-print slot. In theory, the print-out should include everything on the wipe-wall, but neither of the Techs had ever seen a wall that was such a collage of various bits of paper stuck down with spit, and acres of scrawled, and cross-written calculations.

The compress button was designed to rationalise the work, and print it out in a format that could be followed by others in the same field. It didn’t matter what was on the wipe-wall, in so far as it could be handwritten musical score, a story in any language, mathematical calculations, or a combination of many things. It didn’t matter how many times things were crossed out, or how many arrows, circles or lines were used to link thoughts together. It didn’t matter how many symbols were used or whether punctuation was correct. The job of the compressor was to track the process, and then present it in a way that was succinct and accurate, without bypassing any of the creativity or thought processes of the author.

Pages started to emerge from the mini-print slot. Estefan cast an eye over them, but they meant nothing to him, and he couldn’t easily ascertain whether the text book pages were being included. After 20 pages, or so, the mini-print began to make an odd sucking noise.

“Toner,” said Estefan.

“You’re kidding,” said the other Tech.

“No,” said Estefan. “This thing needs toner.”

E
STEFAN HIT THE
switch on the mini-print to turn it off, and set to work fitting a compress button and mini-print slot to the floor.

In theory, the system could be fitted to any surface, and the best of the newer models could be retro-fitted, so that the memories in the surface of the vibrations, which had resulted from the pressure of pen on wipe-wall, or, in this case, chalk on linopro, could be picked up and analysed after the event. Neither of the Techs had fitted one in practice, and neither knew anyone that had retro-fitted a mini-print system, let alone in linopro with a none standard, frankly unknown, unstable writing medium, which was also littered with pages of text from various books, including diagrams and non-standard mathematical symbols.

Fitting the system was not difficult or complicated. The unit came in two, self-contained sections with one broad-spectrum flat sensor to pick up vibrations on the surface that was being used as a wipe-wall. It should only have taken about 20 minutes to fit the system, but Estefan was hampered by having to stand on the surface he was working on, not to mention the fact that he was being constantly admonished by the Operators not to step on anything that might be classed as evidence. He must not obliterate the material, either by wiping out the chalk marks, or by interfering with the floor’s memory of the vibrations it had collected while Tobe was making his calculations. He didn’t have much of a margin for error.

M
ETOO LEFT
T
OBE
in the kitchen with his cup of tea, and went to the garden room to try to get rid of the Police Operator. She hoped that she might be able to persuade him to leave the way he had come, and only return if she needed him, which she considered extremely unlikely.