Savant

by Nik Abnett

  It was almost eleven o’clock before Saintout decided that it was time to ask Master Tobe the first questions and see what happened. He had spent two hours with the Master, more-or-less, and he was already beginning to understand what Metoo went through on a daily basis. He was really beginning to think that the woman must be a saint.

  “So, shall we play our little game, then?” asked Saintout.

  “What game?” asked Tobe. “Tobe doesn’t like games.”

  “Remember the getting to know you game? Come on, it’s easy, and you might have some fun. Ask me anything.”

  Tobe looked at Saintout for several seconds without speaking. The silence started to get to Saintout.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll start. What’s your name?”

  Tobe looked at Saintout, but the Police Operator still couldn’t read his expression.

  “Metoo told you Tobe’s name,” he said. “Tobe knows his name.”

  “You should know your name. Silly question really, but I thought we should start with easy stuff. What is your name?”

  “Tobe. Master Tobe, the Students say. I call Tobe, Tobe.”

  “Now you get to ask me a question,” said Saintout, tapping out a rhythm on the kitchen counter in front of him, unconsciously.

  Tobe looked at Saintout, and asked, “Why do you tap?”

  Saintout stopped tapping, and thought for a moment. “I don’t know. It’s the William Tell overture... I like it. My turn. What’s your title?”

  He already knew the first half-a-dozen questions; Doctor Wooh had been whispering them in his ear for almost two hours. These dull questions had been carefully chosen by a group of mental-health specialists to calibrate something-or-other. Saintout failed to see what good it could do, though, asking this man his name. It was all so undignified.

  “Master Tobe, my Students call me,” said Tobe. “I’m their Master, but I’m not your Master.”

  “Do you know how clever you are?”

  “Yes. That’s two questions. Now I get two questions. Who is ‘William Tell’ and what is ‘Overture’?”

  “Music,” said Saintout. He wanted to ask whether Tobe knew anything about music, or even liked it, but Wooh was whispering the next question urgently into his ear.

  “How many Students do you have?” asked Saintout.

  “Some. Not a lot. Fewer than before. There seem not to be so many. Does Saintout have Students?”

  “No. Do you know the names of your Students?”

  There was a long pause. Saintout assumed that Tobe was thinking about his answer to the question. He couldn’t read the expression on the Master’s face, and waited for a long time for a reply. He was about to give up, and ask the question again, when Tobe spoke.

  “What is the probability that Saintout and Metoo would ask Tobe exactly the same questions?” asked Tobe.

  Saintout was unsure what to do. Tobe hadn’t answered his question, but the Police Operator knew enough about what was going on to know that maths was somewhere at the root of it all. Was Tobe giving him some clue about how to approach the global problem? What part did probability play in the crisis? Was maths the problem or the solution?

  Doctor Wooh was whispering in his ear again.

  “You have to try to ignore what he says and move on to the next question,” she said. “I think you should ask him the question again.” Saintout did nothing for several seconds.

  “Ask him, again,” said Wooh.

  Saintout reached into his ear, and removed the bead. Tobe watched him. The bead was only a few millimetres across, and Saintout was able to pull it out by the tiny thread that nestled in the crevice above his earlobe, and palm the device without Tobe seeing it. With a bit of luck, Tobe would think that he was simply scratching his ear. He squeezed the ear-bead between his thumb and forefinger, and deposited the useless residue, nonchalantly, in his pocket.

  Doctor Wooh could not see what Saintout was doing; she could only watch Tobe, watching Saintout, and his facial expressions weren’t giving anything away.

  “What is the probability that Saintout and Metoo would ask Tobe exactly the same questions?” Saintout asked Tobe. “Tell me about probability.”

  “Follow me,” said Master Tobe, getting up from his stool, and passing Saintout on the way out of the kitchen. Saintout got up and followed Tobe down the corridor, and in through the door to the Master’s tiny room. Tobe was almost bustling, and seemed, so far as Saintout could tell, to be in his element.

  “What does Saintout know about probability?” asked Tobe.

  “Nothing, really. I know that it’s a way of working out how likely it is that something will happen.”

  “Good,” said Tobe, in a tone that suggested an avuncular teacher. He started to draw a probability tree.

  “If I toss a coin, it will land head-up or tail-up,” said Tobe. Saintout wanted to laugh at Tobe’s attempts at the vernacular, but bit his lip, and looked very seriously at the tree diagram. “Obverse or reverse. Each branch represents a toss of the coin, so the first stage is two branches: one for obverse and one for reverse. Each of the two branches has two branches: one each for obverse, one each for reverse. Tobe continued to draw as he explained.

  Once he had the basic diagram with four branches, Tobe started to write along the branches.

  “What is the chance of getting obverse with the first coin?” asked Tobe.

  “It has to be one, or the other,” said Saintout, “so, it’s fifty-fifty.”

  “Or a half,” said Tobe, writing 1/2 on the line, and the same for reverse. “So I’ve got an obverse with the first throw, what are the chances of getting an obverse with the second throw?”

  “I don’t know,” said Saintout. “Less?”

  “Yes, less, but every time the coin is tossed it’s fifty-fifty that it’s obverse.” He wrote 1/2 on the second branch. The chance of getting obverse twice in a row is a half times a half.”

  “Which is what? My maths is shocking.”

  “Then, Frenchie must be very clever,” said Tobe. “Tobe’s maths is very clever, but it is logical, and not shocking at all.”

  Saintout smiled slightly. He tried to hide his responses, because he didn’t want to offend Tobe. He’d completely forgotten that Tobe couldn’t read expressions, and didn’t know how to feel offence. He liked Tobe, and he wanted Tobe to like him.

  “A half times a half is a quarter,” said Tobe. “So the chance of getting two in a row of the same, obverse, or reverse is one in four.”

  “So the more times you toss a coin the less likely you are to get more heads in a row,” said Saintout. “That’s just common sense, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not true.”

  “You just showed me that it was true, though.”

  “I tried tossing a coin. I tossed it a lot.”

  “And, what happened?”

  “Fifty-fifty, except not every single time.”

  Saintout thought for a moment, more-or-less understanding, but hoping that Master Tobe might continue.

  Tobe’s head dropped and he started to giggle into his chest. It wasn’t a man’s laugh, but the noise a clever child might make, or the way a child might laugh at a joke.

  “What is it?” asked Saintout, ducking under Tobe’s shoulder height to try to catch his eye.

  “Not ever on the odd numbers,” said Tobe, giggling some more.

  Saintout thought about that, and finally said, “Because you can’t have half an obverse.”

  “Or half a reverse.”

  “Funny,” said Saintout, smiling at Tobe. “Good joke, Buddy.”

  “Who’s Buddy?” asked Tobe, suddenly serious again. “It’s not true.”

  “You said that before. Tell me what isn’t true.”

  “Can Tobe go to the office?” asked Tobe. “Tobe’s work is at the office. There isn’t room here.”

  “You want to look at your maths?”

  “Tobe wants to look at the maths.”

  “You can’t
go to the office, today, but what if I got you a print-out from the mini-print slot? Would that do?”

  “Tobe would like that.”

  “Okay, Buddy,” said Saintout, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  DOCTOR WOOH SOON realised that the sound was down on her system, and that, for whatever reason, Saintout couldn’t hear her. She could hear him, though, and see what he and Tobe were doing. He wasn’t asking the questions.

  Doctor Wooh was soon signing into Service, urgently. She was horrified by what she was seeing. She had no idea what Saintout thought he was doing, but she knew that she had to stop it.

  THE SHIELD WAS at risk of perforating, the Earth was at Code Orange, there was a maths virus loose in the mini-print system that no one had been able to get to the bottom of, and, now, some renegade Police Operator was offering to give the cause of it all a whole lot of new toys to throw out of his pram. This could not possibly end well.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  BRANTING LEFT PERRETT with Chandar, and Goodman with McColl, and concentrated on Metoo.

  “Why am I here,” asked Metoo, again.

  “Mostly, because you know Master Tobe better than anyone, and we’re hoping that you can answer some questions for us,” said Branting.

  “We could have done that via Service; I could’ve stayed in the flat. We could’ve had a conversation without you putting a chip in my head.”

  “To be fair, you already thought you had a working chip.”

  “That’s not the point,” said Metoo, wearily.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “So, why don’t you trust me?”

  “It’s not a question of trust. If you lied to us, we wouldn’t necessarily know that’s what you were doing, even with the chip.”

  “The point is. I don’t lie.”

  “No,” said Branting, dropping his head, “I know you don’t. You’re a very rare young woman. Very few people have their chips permanently de-activated.”

  “So I understand, but you had a reason for de-activating it, and you had a reason for replacing it, and, as yet, you haven’t explained either to me.”

  “Do you remember the selection processes?”

  “I was just a child.”

  “Well, as you know, everyone undergoes a series of tests during childhood. Some of them are simply done via observation; we have lots of early-learning teachers who monitor children while they’re still in their families.

  “Then there are a series of intelligence tests, which begin when a child reaches about two years old, followed by a series of written tests, which begin when a child is eight or ten, depending.”

  “Depending on what?”

  “The system isn’t entirely regularised, globally. So, for example, a child who doesn’t start day-school until he is seven will take written tests later than a child who begins at five.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “Most children fit into a kind of average score system, and about two-thirds of those are not selected. Those who show a particular talent or intelligence level are automatically selected...”

  “And the rest?”

  “The rest fall into two further categories. At one end of the spectrum, the children continue to be tested, and about one in a thousand of those fall into the Master/Active bracket. Most of those children have already been selected, and the final tests are simply verification of what we already believed.”

  “And the other end?”

  “That’s where it gets complicated, because we really don’t yet know what the people at the other end of the spectrum are truly capable of.”

  There was another long pause.

  “Is that me?” asked Metoo.

  “Sort of.”

  “Are you being deliberately obtuse? What is it that you’re not telling me?”

  “You fall into the rarest category of all. Do you understand the concept of altruism?”

  “Of course. It’s about doing good for its own sake, without reward.”

  “Yes.”

  “Although, I’ve never understood that. Doing good is its own reward.”

  “Exactly. You have answered your own question, and that is why your chip was de-activated. You are reliable. You have formed a bond with Master Tobe, which is, for all sensible purposes, permanent, indestructible, even.”

  “That’s nothing.”

  “That’s everything.”

  “Only to me.”

  Branting coughed and looked at his watch. He was aware that time was moving on, and he still had a great deal to do, not least with Metoo.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Metoo,” said Branting, “but we have a great deal to do, today, so I’d just like to ask you for your co-operation, and we can begin.”

  “I am more than happy to co-operate. Just promise me that Master Tobe is in safe hands, and that nothing bad is going to happen to him.”

  “The point of this exercise is to preserve Master Tobe at all costs,” said Branting. “Rest assured, we have no intentions of harming him in any way.”

  “Good. What would you like me to do?”

  AGENT OPERATOR HENDERSON paced the Service Floor. Service Central had let him know that Master Tobe was being interrogated, using a specified set of questions that constituted a particular psychometric test. A time signal was set to appear on-screen when the questions began. The nine screens tuned in to Tobe’s mind appeared not to change at all, other than a few glitches between 09:00 and 09:30. They were within the normal parameters for Tobe, given that someone new had entered his environment. The glitches were, in fact, smaller than anyone on the Service Floor had anticipated.

  It was close to 11:00 before the time signature lit up in the top right hand corners of the screens, and the line-checks began, in rotation, around the room. Workstation 1 began a line-check at 11:00, which Workstation 2 picked up as soon as One had finished, at 11:07. It would take about an hour for all the Workstations to complete consecutive line-checks, and then the process would begin again.

  It was during the second line-check that things began to happen on the Service Floor.

  The line-check wasn’t necessary to show the changes in Master Tobe’s mental/emotional activity. All twenty-seven Operators sucked breath in through clenched teeth as they saw the fizzing synaptic changes in distinct areas of the screen.

  “Simultaneous line-check,” said Agent Operator Henderson.

  Armed with headsets of various styles and dates, Tech’s danced around the Service Floor, providing the Operators with whatever they needed. Nine rubberpro spheres, set into scratched and greying counter-tops, rolled under nine hands, some of them sweating, or trembling slightly, one or two sticking.

  The Operator at station 5 threw his hands in the air. The Operator standing behind him, pulled him off his chair, unceremoniously, and toggled the switch on the facing edge of the counter; he had taken over in less than ten seconds, but it could still prove to be ten seconds too long.

  Babbage was one of the first to complete the line-check, but within four minutes, all nine Workstations concurred. The activity was in the emotional range, and scattered.

  The readings were highly unusual for an Active.

  “Get me Branting,” Agent Operator Henderson said to no one in particular.

  No one on the Service Floor looked in his direction. Then a Tech came up beside him, and handed him a headset.

  “Here, sir,” said the Tech.

  “Thank you,” said Henderson. “Okay, everyone, as you were.”

  QA WAS WORKING in his alcove, trying to find more Operators with test scores similar to those achieved by Goodman and Perrett. It was proving more difficult than he anticipated. He’d had about a dozen false positives: Operators with exactly the same scores as Goodman, who didn’t appear to follow any of his traits. Qa hadn’t ruled them out entirely; it was possible that they simply hadn’t been in an environment where they could prove themselves. Goodman obviously took his skills for granted, and Perrett had only shown up b
ecause her scores were identical to Goodman’s and she had a history of Codes that tied in with their hypotheses.

  Qa found his third candidate with the second batch of tests, as they came through, an hour after the first batch. Operator Juan Marquez was working in Service in a College on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, and had filled in the questionnaire during his regular shift. He was not working Master Tobe’s station on his College Service Floor, and did not understand why he was being escorted to one of the interview rooms adjacent to the Service Floor. A Ranked Operator, called Burgess, had simply come onto the Service Floor and escorted him off, leaving his Workstation temporarily vacant. It worried Marquez; Workstations were always manned, and everybody knew that the World was in crisis, so why would a working Operator be relieved of his duty and not replaced?

  Chapter Forty-Five

  BRANTING SWITCHED HIS vid-con so that Perrett and Goodman could both see and hear him, but could not see or hear each other.

  McColl had spent some time calming Goodman down, and reassuring the Operator that Service knew what it was doing. He reminded Goodman of Control Operator Branting’s status, and that Branting was by no means the last link in the chain of command. A lot of people were assessing the situation, people with a lot more training and knowledge than Goodman or McColl could claim to have.

  “I know you’ve been working the screens for years,” said McColl, “and you’re a specialist in your field; that’s why they’re consulting you. Trust me; they know what they’re doing.”

  Branting let him finish.

  “Okay,” he said, and McColl and Goodman, and Perrett and Chandar faced their respective vid-cons, expectant. “I’d like to test your emotional and intellectual responses to some images,” said Branting. “We will be monitoring your responses via your chip, but we will verify those results with verbal questions and answers. Are you ready?”