But Zehl was not one of the ordinary surrogates. Supposedly, he was Washington based, appearing and disappearing spasmodically, and often not seen again for long stretches of time. This, along with his position as Sarah’s “supervisor,” told Corrigan that he was really one of the controllers, entering the simulation from time to time in an effort to keep track of how things were going. In all likelihood he was somebody that Corrigan knew, but the physical appearance of injected surrogates could be changed at will. But whoever he really was, Zehl was Corrigan’s only ready channel of communication to the powers outside who had the ability to determine Lilly’s whereabouts, given the nature of the situation.
Corrigan called Sarah Bewley and told her it was important that he get in touch personally with Zehl immediately. Sarah, naturally, wanted to know what he proposed telling Zehl that he didn’t feel he could tell her, his counselor, and the whole thing bogged down in a mire of pique and offended feelings that got him nowhere. In any case, Zehl was out of town and not contactable right now. Corrigan called Zehl’s department in Washington direct, and after some bouncing around obtained a number that had Zehl’s name listed. The voice that eventually answered, however, confirmed that Zehl was currently away and couldn’t be easily reached. In fact, it would be the system covering for the fact that Zehl, or whoever, was not currently coupled into the system. The number Corrigan had called was a code to activate an external flag alerting an operator, to page Zehl.
“This is the twenty-first century, isn’t it?” Corrigan objected. “Are you telling me you can’t get a message to him?”
“Well, maybe . . . if you leave it with me,” the voice replied.
“Tell him it’s from Joe Corrigan of Xylog. I want to talk urgently about Oz. That should get him back to you minutes after he reads it.”
But even a minute outside would still be something like four hours inside. The same speeding up of time that made more than a week of simulation time fly by while Zehl was absent for an hour also meant that Corrigan was going to have to wait for a response. A day for him equated to a little over seven minutes for Zehl, which meant there wasn’t much time out there for anyone to hold lengthy conferences on what they were going to do. It also meant that Lilly would have free rein for a couple of days at least. But, unless he happened to run into her by chance or she decided to find him, there was nothing that Corrigan could do about that.
In the meantime, the best way to avoid having the time drag was to carry on as normal. But now that he knew the situation, he found himself in something of a quandary. Part of his nature—probably to do with his Irishness—rebelled from the prospect of obligingly continuing to act out his role as if nothing had happened, like a rat in a laboratory cage. The system had fooled him, and it couldn’t be allowed to get away with it. On the other hand, he was a scientist involved with an experiment that was to a large degree of his own making, and his new awareness gave him a unique opportunity to function as a privileged observer on the inside. So he satisfied his instincts by teasing the system gently to its limits. This not only provided valuable practical data on where the limits were; but also, like playing word games with Horace and Sarah, he found it perversely and gratifyingly amusing.
* * *
“I’ve got a joke for you,” he told Sherri. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the Galahad Lounge was quiet. “What do you call an insomniac, agnostic, dyslexic?”
“I don’t know. What?”
“Somebody who lies awake all night, wondering `Is there a dog?’ ”
She laughed obligingly, stared through him at the tariff list on the wall, and went away to clear some tables while she thought it over.
It was all so obvious, now that Lilly had forced him to recognize it. Strange, how the obvious was always the last thing you thought of. Or maybe not so strange, Corrigan reflected as he replaced glasses on the shelf below the bar. When you finally see the obvious, then obviously you stop wondering. It was the same as when people were always asking why everything they lost was always in the last place they looked: who was going to carry on looking after they’d found it?