John Brunner – Jagged Orbit

“You really are the most cynical son-of-a-bitch I ever met,” Diablo said, tacking a wink on to the words to amplify his meaning.

“That I will take as a compliment.” Conroy glanced at his watch. “I’ve spent a hell of a lot of time on this by now, though, and I don’t seem to have got anywhere. Let’s see if we can stick to the point, shall we? You were saying you wanted to review what you’d heard and make sure you’d taken it all in.”

“Stick to the point!” Diablo parodied a grin. “If I could find one worth sticking I’d cheerfully do so. I feel more like I’m dredging through mud for bits of salable scrap. Used to do that when I was a kid.” He brisk”Okay, let me take it from the top in chronoloorder to make sure I haven’t missed anything. It starts with you being invited to perform at the Ginsberg for an audience of patients due to be discharged, doesn’t it, Miss Clay?”

Lyla nodded.

“And this performance was remarkable for two things that had never happened to you before. First off, your late mackero had to slap you out of an echo-trap, which as I understand it is due to the presence in the audiof some especially dominant personality, from whom your subconscious can’t tear itself away.”

“That’s what I’ve been told,” Lyla agreed cautiously. “As I said, it had never happened to me before.”

“Okay, then. We’ll set aside for the moment the conof the oracle which developed into an echo-trap, which Mr. Flamen has down on tape so we can check it later. We’ll go on to the second remarkable point, which was that you had a-did you call it a hangover?”

“That’s right. On the way home in Mr. Flamen’s skim

“Ah-hah. You spoke what amounted to another oracle in the waking state instead of in trance.”

Lyla shivered. “It was weird! I had this momentary sense of total certainty, and I heard the words coming out of my own mouth without knowing what they were going to be when they finished.”

“There are processes very much akin to these in vouwork,” Diablo said offhandedly. “You might check on some of the current field-leaders in the enclaves, like Mama Echo in Chicago or the girl I’ve been working with in Blackbury, Mama Fey. However!” He cleared his throat “You played over your oracles with Mr. Flaright? And you didn’t come to any clear concluabout them.”

“We were both kind of distracted,” Lyla muttered. “I’d had a quarrel with Dan, and this thing about taking you on had come up too-though I didn’t know it was you they were talking about when Mr. Prior called with the news. All we figured out was this vague notion that maybe Mrs. Flamen was concerned, but-no, forget that Mr. Flamen asked me in the skimmer why I’d mentioned his wife, so that one must have been exceptionally clear.”

She looked surprised. “I’d forgotten about that!”

“And your automatics at the hospital”-Diablo turned to Reedeth-“comped out probable subjects for each of the three oracles Miss Clay had managed to issue before she was slapped awake, and the one which deinto an echo-trap was allegedly concerned with Harry Madison. Correct?”

Reedeth nodded, face strained. “At the time, of course, I didn’t know what an echo-trap implied. I heard the term for the first time when I spoke to Dan Kazer diafter Miss Clay’s performance, and it wasn’t until later that I followed it up. After what’s happened today, though, I’m beginning to wonder whether I was a fool to believe what the automatics told me.”

“Why so?”

“Well.” Reedeth made a helpless gesture. “Just before we came away from the hospital, there was this thing we told you about: Mr. Flamen asked why these computers here predicted failure of the Federal computo solve the problem of interference on his daily show, and the answer we got was transparent nonsense.”

“Jim, what’s happened to the open mind I tried to encourage in you when you were studying with me?” Conroy said.

“Open mind! Christ, if I’m going to be told to believe in women patients who can interfere at a distance with a three-vee broadcast, the next stop will be raising the devil and doing duty to a plastic idol!”