The part of the PAC complex on Jevlen that she had “visited” with Hunt earlier in the evening had contained such objects as ornaments and pictures on the walls of the cafeteria from where they had seen the Shapieron, and some tools standing against a wall in the gallery outside. What would have happened, she had asked Hunt, if she had tried to “move” one of those objects to a different place? He had said that VISA..R would cause her to experience the action faithfully. In that case, she asked, where would she find it when they arrived physically at Jevlen tomorrow? Obviously, where it had been in the first place, Hunt replied—since the object would never have really been moved at all.
That bothered her. She remembered, too, the burr that she had felt on the edge of the door into the coupler cubicle, and the business with the cigarette ash on her sleeve. It all bothered her. She got up
from the bed, went back into the lounge to get a cup of hot chocolate from the autochef, and tried to fathom why.
Judged by Terran notions of what constituted worthwhile return for cost and effort, the whole thing seemed a pointless exercise in elaborate absurdity. More than that: a deception that confused synthesis with reality, leaving the recipient to disentangle the resulting fusion that would be left impressed upon memory. But the Thuriens could handle it naturally, without conflict or contradiction. Indeed, to them, in a way that no human could really feel or comprehend, the capturing of the actuality was all-important, and the degree to which the system failed to do so constituted the deception. Hence their extraordinary obsession with levels of detail that to humans would have served no meaningful purpose and made no sense.
And now, she felt, she was getting closer to what was troubling her.
Yes, the Thuriens were benign, nonaggressive, and rational, and that was all very nice; but it was also beside the point. What was less reassuring, she realized, was the utter alienness that she had glimpsed of the inner workings of the Thurien mind. The professionals like F-Iutit and Danchekker had been ton close for too long, and were too excited by the technology, to see it. Or perhaps they had forgotten.
What kind of havoc, then, might have been wreaked on the collective psyche of a whole race immersed in a form of mind manipulation essentially alien to its nature for thousands of years?
She turned and stared at the door, uncertain for several seconds of exactly what she intended to do. Then, resolving herself, she left the cabin again and returned to the cubicles containing the Thurien neural couplers.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The familiar feeling of warmth and relaxation closed around her as she eased back into the recliner and VISAR’s intangible fingers took control of her senses.
“Tell me again how these Thunen protocols on privacy work,” she said in her mind to the machine. “What’s to stop you going deeper than just accessing sensory data, and extracting anything you want out of my head?’’
“Programming rules built into the system,’’ VISAP. answered. “They confine my operations to processing and communicating only what users consciously direct.”
“So you don’t read minds?”
“No.~~
“But you could?”
“Technically, yes.”
“I don’t think I like that. Doesn’t the thought of it bother the Thuriens?”
“I can’t see why it should, any more than the thought of a surgeon seeing your insides organically.”
“No? But then I guess you wouldn’t. You were designed by them, so you think the way they do.”
‘‘Possibly so.’’
“Can the rules be broken?”
“It would require a specific authorization from the user for me to override the directive. So the user is always in control. Anyway, what could someone have to hide?”
Gina could not ontain a laugh. “Don’t the humans ever have thoughts or a side of their nature deep down that they try to hide even from themselves?’’
“How could I know? If they do, then by definition they don’t reveal it.”
Really? Gina thought. Ganymean minds might be capable of such commendable self-discipline, but she doubted if a typical human one would. “Were the Jevienese as sensible and restrained in the way they used JEVEX?” she asked.