All in all a pretty ordinary day.
Reedeth’s office door buzzed and he told it to open and there indeed was Harry Madison in his patient’s oversuit of the bright green shade which signified minidisturbance and, ordinarily, impending discharge. Seeing him around the hospital for such a long time after he had-as the phrase went-“gone to green” was not, of course, the first thing that had attracted Reedattention to him, but it was the factor which led to the alarming discovery that he was trapped here in a tangle of legalisms.
He had been committed by the Army, following conservice in a brushfire war in New Guinea, at a time when the subject of kneeblank draftees was rather a sensitive one and it was politic to send him to a civil instead of a military institution. Naturally that made the Army his legal guardian, for he appeared to have no surviving relatives. However, by the time he was handed his new green suit, the Army no longer wanted to know about him. They’d given up accepting knees even as volunteers, and they certainly would not admit responfor a former conscript whose medical discharge had removed him from the reserve. That meant that he automatically became a ward of New York State, and directly his personality profiles matched the computerideal laid down for him he should have been turned loose to fend for himself subject only to restrictions on things like his credit rating, getting married and movout of the state to reside elsewhere.
However, his personality profiles, though stable, had continued to deviate from the predetermined optimum for a man of his background, race and abilities, and morea stern directive from the Bureau of State and Federal Relations decreed that no kneeblank patient should ever be released with the least shadow of doubt still hovering over his case. News of such an action, blown up by some skilled propagandist such as Pedro Diablo, could far too easily be turned into a legitimate casus insurrectionis and bring down black wrath on all their heads.
Yet it seemed damnably unjust to Reedeth that Madishould be cooped up indefinitely for what amounted to no more than eccentricity.
He grew aware that Madison had made a formal refto the desketary being in a mechanical double bind and asked permission to fix it. Belatedly he nodded, and Madison wheeled in the obese reparobot on its eight soft wheels and deftly connected its terminals to the faulty appliance.
Watching, Reedeth wondered what the directorate of IBM would say if they knew their expensive, elaborate installation for the Ginsberg Hospital was being serviced by one of the inmates.
He let some time pass in silence, not being in the mood for casual chat, but eventually he forced himself to speak at random. It couldn’t be very pleasant for Madison to be the only knee in the entire hospital; he deserved to be talked to whenever the chance arose.
“Ah-Harry!” Reedeth picked on the only subject he could call to mind. “That damned machine you’re fixknow why it quit on me?”
“Well, you gave it something it couldn’t handle, I guess.” Madison didn’t look up from his work.
Reedeth snorted. “I was describing Dr. Spoelstra to it, and some damned censor-circuit must have cut in. It’s ridiculous!” He heard his tone growing heated and was unable to prevent it. “Who’s supposed to be in charge around here, me or some arrogant computer with a load of its designer’s prejudices built in? I mean, I hadn’t said anything more-more detailed about Dr. Spoelstra than you could see by just looking at her!”
He caught himself, gave an embarrassed grin, and turned back to the window. Did Madison ever talk about his therapists with the other patients? It wasn’t likely, in view of the high-order segregation Mogshack insisted on: not only racial, religious, sexual and all the other commonplace social boundaries, but also categories of mental disorder formed dividing lines within the hos
If he did, though, so what? He’d only be discussing a shared area of experience. Even if it constituted an invasion of privacy-a view which on the intellectual level Reedeth would have been prepared to contest after his third or fourth drink-the staff members were necessarily of object status to the patients, part of the environment like furniture and lamp-posts.