“Do it where?” she remembered asking. But the examiner, that was a guy, nice-looking greyheaded man, asked her to match up all these shapes and holes—God, she hadn’t done this one in years. “I’m not good at this,” she said. ‘’I don’t fly little cubes.”
Neither did he, he said. At least he had a sense of humor. So she ran the test and she tracked on discrimination stuff that flashed on screens, they moved her to another station and belted her in and the computer spun her around and around—easy piece, nothing hard at all. Til the floor dropped out from under her and then the thing went through its paces.
Wanted you to draw a straight line? Right.
Wanted you to get up and walk one?
Yeah. Maybe.
Sit in the spin chair again. Wait for the light and press the button while the chair spins?
Siren blast. Right before the light flash.
Dirty trick, sumbitch. Dirty trick. Flash again. Flash, flash. Pause. Flash.
Hold the yoke and the toggles, make the VR lines meet? This was a good one. Hadn’t done this one before….
Weight escaped his balance and bounced. Dekker ended up on one knee, caught a breath and waited for the room to stop spinning before he went to pick it up and rack it and lock it in. Good show he was going to make for the meds in an hour. He drew long breaths, sat down and felt after the towel to mop his face.
Stars came out of a vast dark. Lights on the panel glowed with information….
It was in his head, the same as, in the Belt, you got to seeing rocks in your sleep, not rocks as they existed in the deep dark, but the way they were in the charts, the courses they ran, falling sunward, faster and faster, and then more and more slowly outward—
He wiped the sweat that stung his eyes. He heard somebody come in, challenged at the office for numbers and names. “Yeah,” he heard someone say, far away and a door shut…
Echo. Door opening and closing. He’d seen a shape. He’d talked to someone. But he couldn’t remember to whom. He chased the memory. But the voice mat came back lacked all tone:
Just checking. Do what you were doing….
Who in hell would he take that answer from?
Piece of nonsense. He could screw this test. They wanted him to discriminate a damn lot of advancing lines and dots? Easier if the sensors didn’t itch.
He muttered, ‘ ‘Quick way to solve this. Who programmed this?”
Examiner said, “Don’t talk.”
“This is a piece of shit, major. Begging pardon.” Zap. “Damn arcade game.”
“Watch that one.”
“This is fuckin’ armscomp! I’m not testing for this—“
Zap.
“You’re not damn bad, lieutenant… But you’re not real modest, either.”
“I’m damned good. But I’m not killing things.”
“You have a moral objection?”
He put hands and eyes on autopilot and left them to search for screen-generated threats. At definable intervals. Random number generator in the virtuals, for God’s sake. “I got a moral objection. I got a moral objection to getting shot at.”
“Exactly what we’re looking for.”
He thought about that reasoning. He thought about screwing the test, while he was zapping stupid dots. Faster now. “Screw it, you severely got a pattern in here.”
“I’ve been telling them that.”
“Tell you something.” Zap. “I’m supposed to be in Stockholm. Somebody skuzzed my records.” Zap. “Matched me up with the lunatic.” Zap. Zap-zap-zap. “Oh, hell.”
“See? Not all a pattern. You missed mat one. Getting cocky, were you?”
Faster now. “Son of a bitch,” he said.
“You have two hands, two keysets. Brain can do both operations. Hands can. How good are you?”
“Damned moonbeam partner of mine,” he muttered. “You give me programming. I’m telling you—anywhere else is a waste—“ Zap. “I don’t want combat. —I know what this mother’s doing—“
Zap/zap/zap—
Hand on the other pad. Interrupt to Command level and invoke the chaos o/i off the internal generators. Obsolete as a security device, but certainly an improvement on this antique.
Resume. Let them figure that one. Let their techs come in and patch it if they didn’t like it.