John Brunner – Jagged Orbit

“Ariadne! Ariadne! Where art thou now that I need thy clew of string?” On impulse, he chose to utter that aloud too, and an instant later was not sure whether he had glossed the decision with a veneer of voluntarism in order to delude himself. The desketary emitted eleccomplaints as it matched and discarded partial resemblances, and finally produced the response he had expected.

“Assuming the reference to ‘Ariadne’ connotes an inregarding Dr. Spoelstra, her location is at present on Floor Nine of Wing Four and she is subject to a Class Two interdiction on being disturbed. Please declare the urgency of your requirements.”

Reedeth gave a humorless laugh. When, after half a minute or so, the desketary had heard nothing further, it added with a convincing tinge of artificial doubt, “No reference can be found to her possessing a piece of string whether in the form of a clew or otherwise. Am I authorized to add this to my stock of data concerning her?”

“By all means,” Reedeth assured it cordially. “You may record that she alone knows the way out of the maze. You may furthermore store the fact that she has skin smoother than synthosilk, exceptionally beautiful breasts, the most sensual mouth ever divinely wished on a mortal woman, thighs which probably correspond to an equation that would blow all your circuits, and-”

He had been going to add that she had a heart of Ice-V, but at that point an unhappy grinding noise emerged from the bowels of the desketary and a flashred light came on to signify that it was temporarily out of service. Furious, Reedeth jumped to his feet, What in the world was the good of letting the contract for the Ginsberg Hospital’s computing system to a firm which was currently hiring as many neo-puritans as was IBM? When at least eighty percent of the patients he was trying to cope with were suffering from sexual hangit was a constant source of irritation to have these censor-circuits expressing reflexive mechanical Grundyall the time.

And yet, in a way, it was a relief to be deprived of the desketary’s company. Reconciling the web of inthat permeated his working environwith the principles he gave lip-service to was a paradox he had never really solved.

He walked over to the window-wall of the office and stared out at the vast bulk of the Ginsberg Memorial State Hospital for the Mentally Maladjusted. Fortress-like, with tall maxecurity towers distributed around its perimeter and linked by curtain walls as though some drawing of a fairy-tale castle from a children’s book had been unsympathetically interpreted in modern concrete, it was a structural analog of that chance to “retire and regroup” which Mogshack advocated as a perfect antito almost any problem of personal adjustment. There were windows only on the low-built administrawings; the towers themselves were featureless. The sight of them-so the argument ran-offered to a fearful newly-committed patient the promise of ultimate imfrom the intolerable challenges of the outer world.

But the view from here always made Reedeth think of the medieval castles that were rendered obsolete by the advent of gunpowder. And in an age of pocket nukes.?

He sighed, recalling the query posed in a mild voice by Xavier Conroy, under whom he had worked while preparing his doctorate thesis. The plans for the Ginshad just been published, together with a persuasive summary by Mogshack of the underlying principles.

“So what provision has Dr. Mogshack made for the patients whose recovery is likely to be delayed by their inability to discern any way of getting out again?”

It had taken him two years’ work here to appreciate the full force of that criticism, and indeed only his unrecognition of Harry Madison’s plight had brought it home to him. At the time, he had chuckled along with everyone else at Mogshack’s curt and pointed reply.

“I’m grateful to Dr. Conroy for yet another demonof his ability to jump his fences before he comes to them. Perhaps he would care to favor us with his company at the Ginsberg, when he will be accorded ample opportunity to figure out the solution to his prob-which, incidentally, I suspect to be one of many.”

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