Shipley thought it was plain to everyone that his interests lay in science, not in whatever satisfaction came from exercising authority over people. He was not surprised, for he had never entertained the illusion that, by the generally accepted criteria, he was particularly promotable material. Neither was he concerned. The decision was one that he had made consciously, a long time ago. He replied, “I don’t think that the neural work on P-Two and EVIE would be affected much, either way. If it fits in better with other plans, then fine.”
“Such an arrangement would be acceptable?”
“I’m assuming that my present group remains intact.”
“Oh, no question. You and your people simply transfer under the new system as is. It’s really the other sections that get reorganized more, around you. You carry on as normal.”
“Okay.”
“We’re responding to new opportunities in a changing world,” Pinder said. “Naturally, the new organization that we’re talking about would benefit from the direction of somebody whose background best qualifies them to exploit those opportunities. I’m sure you see my point—the contacts and resources that Tyron’s government and industrial experience give him access to are something that the corporation can’t afford to ignore.”
“I see;” Shipley said.
What he saw was Corrigan being shoved into a subordinate position incommensurate with his ambitions, tied to a project that Shipley was becoming increasingly certain was not going to be the corporation’s mainline development thrust. But he had seen that much coming for some time anyway. More disturbing now was to see these overtures being made in this fashion, while Corrigan was away. It invited suspicions of more devious motives behind them. Shipley had no idea what these might be, but his instincts detected something underhanded.
Back in his office, he brooded for a while over the situation. Then he asked his secretary, Kathy Rentz, to find out Corrigan and Evelyn’s planned schedule in California, and to try to get ahold of them. Kathy checked with Judy Klein in Corrigan’s office and got back to Shipley half an hour later.
“They were due back in San Francisco today, but the hotel there says they called last night and canceled the reservation. Judy hasn’t heard anything.”
“Dammit. . . . What about their mobile number. Did you get that from the car-hire company?”
“Yes I did. I’ve tried it half a dozen times at least, but it’s not accepting. Sorry, Eric. That’s all I can tell you.”
Chapter Nineteen
Corrigan didn’t know Lilly well enough to have any real idea what she might do. She seemed sane and stable enough on the surface, but he had been confounded by human nature often enough to know not to trust first impressions. For his part, he had no difficulty accepting and adjusting to the situation—he knew the background to Oz and was committed to its success. But how might somebody else react in a world where no action could have “real” consequences, and who really believed that twelve years of a life had been stolen?
The trouble was, he still hadn’t been able to trace her. He had gone to the North Side again, with no result, and got Horace to call companies listed under “Shoe Manufacture” in the city directory, to find out if any of them employed somebody called Lilly. This had produced four Lillys, none of them the right one. Either her firm was listed as something else, or she had told him a wrong story for some reason, or given him a false name for some reason, or she went by a different name at work for some reason . . . or any one of a thousand other possibilities that knowledge of human nature said happened every day. If this was the kind of thing that the machines were supposed to figure out, then good luck to them, Corrigan thought. Ten thousand years hadn’t been enough for humans to even begin figuring out each other. Whether those twelve years had been real or not, he had to admit that they had certainly changed some of his attitudes.
What he needed to do, then, was talk to Dr. Zehl. It was obvious now, of course, why Zehl seemed so different from most of the people that Corrigan met: he was different—not an internal animation created and manipulated by the system, but, like Lilly and himself, a real-person surrogate projected in from the outside. Corrigan realized now that he had met others, too, in the course of those years. If the original plan had been adhered to, there should be fifty or so of them mixed in among the regular population.