The tour wasn’t over yet, of course, and Wang-mu dutifully followed Grace’s son wherever he led. But she hardly paid attention beyond what was needed to make polite responses. Peter seemed even more distracted, and Wang-mu could guess why. He would have not only the same feelings Wang-mu had, but he must also be grieving for the loss of connection with Jane through the jewel in his ear. If she did not recover her ability to control data flow through the communications satellites orbiting this world, he would not hear her voice again.
They came to an older section of campus, some rundown buildings in a more utilitarian architectural style. “Nobody likes coming here,” he said, “because it reminds them of how recently our university became anything more than a school for training engineers and teachers. This building is three hundred years old. Come inside.”
“Do we have to?” asked Wang-mu. “I mean, is it necessary? I think we get the idea from the outside.”
“Oh, but I think you want to see this place. Very interesting, because it preserves some of the old ways of doing things.”
Wang-mu of course agreed to follow, as courtesy required, and Peter wordlessly went along. They came inside and heard the humming of ancient air-conditioning systems and felt the harsh refrigerated air. “These are the old ways?” asked Wang-mu. “Not as old as life on the beach, I think.”
“Not as old, that’s true,” said their guide. “But then, we’re not preserving the same thing here.”
They came into a large room with hundreds and hundreds of computers arranged in crowded rows along tables that stretched from end to end. There was no room for anyone to sit at these machines; there was barely enough space between the tables for technicians to slide along to tend to them. All the computers were on, but the air above all the terminals was empty, giving no clue about what was going on inside them.
“We had to do something with all those old computers that Starways Congress made us take offline. So we put them here. And also the old computers from most of the other universities and businesses in the islands — Hawaiian, Tahitian, Maori, on and on — everyone helped. It goes up six stories, every floor just like this, and three other buildings, though this one is the biggest.”
“Jane,” said Peter, and he smiled.
“Here’s where we stored everything she gave us. Of course, on the record these computers are not connected by any network. They are only used for training students. But Congress inspectors never come here. They saw all they wanted to see when they looked at our new installation. Up to code, complying with the rules — we are obedient and loyal citizens! Here, though, I’m afraid there have been some oversights. For instance, there seems to be an intermittent connection with the university’s ansible. Whenever the ansible is actually passing messages offworld, it is connected to no computers except through the official safeguarded time-delayed link. But when the ansible is connected to a handful of eccentric destinations — the Samoan satellite, for instance, or a certain faroff colony that is supposedly incommunicado to all ansibles in the Hundred Worlds — then an old forgotten connection kicks in, and the ansible has complete use of all of this.”
Peter laughed with genuine mirth. Wang-mu loved the sound of it, but also felt just a little jealousy at the thought that Jane might well come back to him.
“And another odd thing,” said Grace’s son. “One of the new computers has been installed here, only there’ve been some alterations. It doesn’t seem to report correctly to the master program. It neglects to inform that master program that there is a hyperfast realtime link to this nonexistent old-style network. It’s a shame that it doesn’t report on this, because of course it allows a completely illegal connection between this old, ansible-connected network and the new godproof system. And so requests for information can be passed, and they’ll look perfectly legal to any inspection software, since they come from this perfectly legal but astonishingly flawed new computer.”
Peter was grinning broadly. “Well, somebody had to work pretty fast to get this done.”