Society of the Mind
Page 39
The screen was just as she'd left it. She took a deep breath and concentrated.
What was still unexplained was how the Other fit into those theories. To hear Dorothy talk, the "virus" was analogous to the microorganisms that infected humans with disease. But that description didn't fit the Other, which was large and seemingly quite tangible — like a tumor. And there were other pieces of the puzzle that didn't fit, like Gray putting the Model Eight facilities and Krantz's nuclear device labs back on full automation. But that made no sense, because the computer could see nothing inside of them.
Just like the Model Three cars, she realized in a flash. Those robots and facilities are under the control of the Other, and Gray was perfectly happy with that result. The computer was left only with the assembly building and Gray seemed inordinately concerned about its safety.
Laura slowly nodded, the picture coming into focus. It was a picture of the computer waging war against the Other for control of the island… and losing.
She looked at the black eyeball beside the door, then rolled her chair forward to the keyboard. "This is getting spooky. Are you watching me again?"
"It's not you. You just have no idea how much I'm having to deal with right now," Laura typed.
Laura's guard instantly went up. "You seem to be in better spirits," she typed warily.
"Mr. Gray? Himself?"
"You mean he raised your tolerance for errors?"
Laura's fingers hovered in the air over the keyboard. The computer's mood had changed completely.
It was more talkative than before. More talkative, possibly, than it should have been.
Ignoring her faint pang of guilt, Laura typed, "Did you listen to Mr. Gray's speech at the town meeting?" She winced and hit Enter.
What did he say?
What did he say? Laura thought — her lips moving, but no words coming out. She glanced up at the open door — at the microphone. She would have to be careful. "That's what I hear," Laura typed. "A whole new challenge that's opening up for mankind. A new frontier." The theme from Star Trek began to play in her head, and Laura rolled her eyes as she hit Enter.
She felt like a safecracker who'd just felt a tumbler fall into place.
Was she all the way in? Was she "ready" now? "Do you, by any chance, just happen to have a transcript of the speech, since I missed it?"
ACCESS RESTRICTED
"Shit!" Laura hissed, slapping the top of the monitor in frustration. She shoved back from the desk and stormed out of her office. She wanted to walk off the irritation, so she headed to the lounge for a soft drink.
When she returned, she saw
"Yes?" she typed.
"Don't you know that there's something wrong with you?"
The distinction wasn't lost on Laura. Anesthesia was the loss of physical sensation, while analgesia was the inability to feel pain while conscious. "Has it worked?" she typed.
"Amazing," Laura said, barely vocalizing the word and again glancing up at the lens beside the door. What to ask next? she thought. Where do I go? There were so many questions, and the most interesting and significant ones would almost certainly draw another access-restricted message.
"Do you know anything about Mr. Gray's 'big brother' program down in the Model Eight workshops?"
"Mr. Gray sounds like a libertarian."
"Would it surprise you if I told you that Mr. Gray has instituted a system of having humans watch the Model Eights? Isn't that an invasion of their privacy?"
"Why? Aren't you just exhibiting prejudice against the Model Eights because they look different?"
Laura hesitated, then began to type with growing anticipation. "Have the Model Eights learned something that's significant? Are they in possession of some dangerous knowledge?"
ACCESS RESTRICTED
"Bingo," she whispered, feeling another tumbler fall into place.
"Nothing," Laura typed.
"Never mind!"
Laura was ecstatic. She was beginning to see the bigger picture. Gray's secrecy, his "need-to-know" policies and King-level access and confidentiality agreements, his ideas about privacy and intellectual property… and the access-restricted messages. They all had a common thread woven through them. They all dealt with Gray's control of information.
But there remained the most important question of all. How did all that tie in with the virus… the Other?
35
When Laura ascended the stairs from the computer center entrance to the surface, she saw that the sun hung low over the horizon. She stood on the edge of the curbed roadbed to wait for a car.
Looking out over the flat lawns of the restricted area, she could see tall rockets rising on either side of the massive assembly building.
The middle launch pad would be full also, she thought. All three launches were going off just after dark.
Not far from the computer center was the jungle into which Hoblenz had taken her. It marked the edge of the cleared lawns nearest Launchpad A and came to within a hundred yards of the bunker's heavy concrete walls.
She looked down to pick at the mud still caked underneath her fingernails, turning the day's new riddles over and over in her mind.
Laura jumped back from the curb with a start when a Model Three eased up beside her. Recovering quickly, she got into the car and buckled up. She couldn't think where to tell the car to take her.
Filatov had warned her not to go out by herself this close to sunset. He hadn't said why, and she hadn't felt the need to ask.
"Let's see. Car? Please take me to, um… those swimming pools where the employees train to be astronauts." She had no idea whether the computer could figure her instructions out, but the car took off immediately. It made the loop in front of the computer center and headed into the jungle in the direction of the Village. It was a short ride. The gate demarcating the restricted area rose, and the car pulled slowly onto the central boulevard of the village. Through the windshield the imposing wall of the volcanic crater towered over the puny buildings. Gray's house, usually brightly lit in the twilight, stood dark on its perch high above.
The car drove slowly past the shops, luxury apartments, and restaurants, but there was no need for such caution. The nearly empty Village looked like a ghost town. An occasional pedestrian walked purposefully down the sidewalk, hurrying to some destination before darkness descended. None of the people she saw were children, and none were women. They all looked to be men in their twenties or thirties — risk-takers who had chosen not to flee like the others.
Two of Hoblenz's soldiers patrolled the sidewalk, one ten meters behind the other. The trailing man spun and walked backward every few steps to check the rear. They wore black combat gear, and radio aerials rose high above their backpacks. They carried the long black rifles the computer said were most effective against the robots.
The car turned onto a side street and pulled up under the portico of a long building. The car door beside her opened, and Laura looked out at the wall of glass surrounding the main entrance. The building's windows were heavily tinted, but it looked as if the lights were on inside. There were security troops stationed in sandbagged positions all down its length.
"Car, could you not leave me here, please?" she said, and got out.
The car remained right where Laura had left it. She went to the front door and pushed. Inside, the building was alive with activity.
It was a cheery sight when compared to the depressing scene on the Village streets.
"Hi! Are you one of the new recruits?" a peppy blond girl with a clipboard asked. She and several others like her milled about the lobby wearing identical red athletic shorts and T-shirts that read EMPLOYEE TRAINING CENTER.
"'New recruits'?" Laura replied — confused.
"Did you just arrive on a flight?"
"Oh… no. My name is Dr. Laura Aldridge."
"Sure! I know you. The psychiatrist, right?"
Laura was shocked. "Psychologist," she corrected, "but how did you know?"
"From the TV. It was all over CNN."
"What was? What did they say?"
"They said you were here from Yale and were treating Mr. Gray for some problem."
A bus had arrived, and the girl looked back at the crowd forming outside.
"Harvard," Laura said, but the woman to whom she directed the comment was distracted. The bus pulled up under the portico, and the girl rose to her tiptoes to peer over Laura's shoulder at the new recruits. "And that report's not true," Laura objected.
"I know that! It's just the press." The girl, Laura realized, was a true believer.
The door behind Laura opened to admit the noise of a dozen excited conversations. Laura turned to see the first of a long line of people.
They were presumably infused with the same spirit as the camp counselor who awaited them. The bus headed off — back, Laura imagined with growing amazement — to pick up more of Gray's reserves.
Two other young women joined the cheerleader with the clipboard.
All three were similarly attired. "Welcome to the Gray Corporation Astronaut Training Facility!"
The sound of it sent the new arrivals into a general commotion. Laura shook her head in astonishment at the quick change in Gray's tactics. Instead of tricking people into courses secretly intended to prepare them for "phase two," he was now using the astronaut training program as his drawing card. The chance to fly in space, Laura thought. It was a heady proposition. Another bus pulled up outside.
"First things first!" the blond girl announced. "Are any of you not already employed by the Gray Corporation or one of its arms?" No one raised their hand.
So that's how he got people here so quickly, Laura thought.
"Great!" the camp counselor chirped. "No paperwork!" A lighthearted cheer rose from the group. Most looked bedraggled from travel, but their faces were alert and awake. For them, it was the beginning of a new life. Phase two.
"I have it down here," the blond girl said, raising the clipboard into the air, "that everyone has completed the basic course at the regional centers and has signed up for Introductory Mechanics: Construction Techniques! Is that right?"
One woman raised her hand. "Is there any chance to switch to Metallurgical Processing?" she asked with a thick German accent. "They said I might be able to switch once I got here."
"I'm sorry, but all the fabricating classes are full. Do you want to continue on in Mechanical, or do you wanna go back home and wait for a call?"
"Are you kidding?" the trainee asked, and the crowd roared with laughter.
"O-o-kay. Now, I know you've all been on long flights, but I hope you got some sleep. The course you're about to enter is going to be intense. There'll be no rest for the weary. I can, however, offer you two treats as a welcome-aboard present tonight. First off, are you ready to take a dip in the pool?"
Quite a few "yeahs" sounded amid the general excitement and beaming smiles of the group. It was more than one would expect from adults offered a swim in a pool, but Laura could feel vicariously their excitement at embarking on the adventure of a lifetime.
"Then we'll head straight to Outfitting to get your new gear. We should be out of the pool and dried off just in time for the real treat of the day. Tonight, a few hours after sunset, the Gray Corporation has scheduled its first-ever launch of three rockets simultaneously from the island!"
The new arrivals were clearly thrilled. When they were led down a corridor by their guides, Laura gravitated toward the opposite side of the lobby A small group of people were gathered around a television.
Before Laura could see the screen, she could hear that they were watching a newscast.
"… neither confirmed nor denied reports coming off Capitol Hill that Joseph Gray had refused a direct request by the President to allow an inspection of his island by members of the International Atomic Energy Commission. Senate sources did say, however, that unilateral U.S. action had not been ruled out and that the President would be granted the widest possible latitude in dealing with the emergency up to, and including, the use of U.S. military forces."
The people on the U-shaped sofa around the high-definition television wore grim looks. These were not the cheerful faces of the welcoming committee or the wide-eyed wonder of the would-be space cadets. These were the worried looks of older hands.
The anchorwoman went on to say that a commission established to deal with the crisis had no independent technical means of verifying the data on the asteroid released by Gray.
"Why don't you tell the world what the rest of the report said?" one of the men slouched on the sofa sniped bitterly, but the anchorwoman moved on to a story about end-of-the-world "asteroid parties" being planned across America. "That damn commission found that if our data was correct," the man on the sofa pointed out, "then Gray's plan should lead to a safe retrieval."
"They would leave that part out," a woman sitting across the U chimed in.
Laura turned and headed back to the car. A new batch of recruits was following its leader toward the locker rooms.
"Are we allowed to look around the island?" someone asked from the back of the pack.
"During the daylight hours, yes, but not after dark."
Laura headed out to the car — out into the black night.
It was dark, but the laptop's screen bathed the keyboard in blue light.
She sat on the base of the statue that dominated the central boulevard below. The location seemed a natural focal point of the Village, and Laura could see where its slab had been defaced. But the chips in the sharp edges of the granite were not the prank of some juvenile vandals, as Griffith had suggested. They were the result of the awkward missteps of thousand-pound robots, Laura felt sure.
"Why is there no artwork in the Village?" she typed. "Just the one statue?" Laura hit Enter and then craned her neck to look up at the marble figure of a woman. She wore pants, not the flowing toga of classic sculpture. Her head was raised to a globe that she held to the heavens in her hands. Laura couldn't see well in the darkness, but the orb seemed to be sculpted and was slightly irregular in shape.
Laura confirmed that the patient car still stood beside her, then looked back down at the glowing screen.
Laura looked at the buildings that lined the boulevard There were no Greek columns, no Victorian woodwork, no sleek chrome-and-glass façades of the late twentieth century. It contained elements of numerous styles without any one prevailing over the others.
"Well, how truly multicultural of him," Laura zyped. "What about his house? It's filled with the works of dead white European males."
"Are you saying it's all environment, not heredity?"
"You sure seem to be in a talkative mood," Laura typed.
<"It's good to be alive!", as you humans say.>
Something was not quite right. "Has Mr. Gray done any more reprogramming today? Given you any more 'analgesics'?"