He flicked on his microphone. “Connie? You willing to face the folks in red?”
“If we don’t have the right to ask these questions, and the clearances for them, then who does? I’d say go for it. We’ve got a need to know.”
“O.K., then. Seventeen, assuming you can do this resurrection business, do you also have preventive-medicine routines? Can you repair someone, cure them of internal injuries or diseases, in this manner?”
The computer sounded almost relieved. “Of course. That’s well known to the medical section. However, unless they could be brought here or shipped to the Gate, they would have to be in a free-form Flux environment for me to do it. Finished terraformed areas like the core here remove my grid from being able to do fine work of that type. I can erase, even erase and reform exactly, what is above a terraformed grid square, but I can’t alter it.”
“Could you, say, repair those things leading to aging? Say, could you make me physically sixteen again?”
“You’re flagged. I warned you. You pursued this line too long.”
“O.K., so we’re flagged. Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“We could redesign ourselves—singly or even en masse?”
“Yes, of course. However, the larger the group, the more common the program would have to be and the more least common denominator the desired sum. Um—I must warn you now that any release of any of this sort of information to anyone beyond yourselves without a specific clearance and need to know is a criminal offense under company codes.”
“I’d already been told a lot of this. I just didn’t really remember what was nagging at me yesterday until now, when that conversation came back. Seventeen—has that sort of modification ever been performed on anyone on New Eden against the will or desire of the subject?”
“Sorry, Toby, that information is at your classification level but beyond your need-to-know flag. All further information on this subject must be obtained only with clearance from higher authority.”
“That’s all right. Seventeen. I’m just surprised that they didn’t throw that blocker in earlier. I’m not an idiot. I can form easy logical assumptions based on my own programming knowledge.”
“They didn’t throw it in earlier because of your position,” the computer explained. “As a department head in programming, there are a million cross-referenced topics that you might have to have a need to know. Until your flag point, all your questions could be cross-related to your job and your responsibilities for public safety, individual safety, and administrative continuity.”
He sighed. “O.K., Seventeen. I found out what I wanted to know. I guess it’s time now for Connie and me to slink back to our tents and see who shows up.”
“Within my limits, I will try to protect you.”
It sounded so very sincere, he really believed it.
They switched off and he walked over to Connie. “Still think it’s a fun academic exercise?”
She shrugged. “So we’ll get a grilling. So what? We’re a stable pair. We won’t blurt this out in ads all over the camp, and it’s handy to know. It brings up a whole lot of possibilities for the future. We’re on the driver’s side of this thing, and we work for the same bosses they do. I sure as hell ain’t gonna be goin’ around telling folks that if I get knocked off I’ll come back but they won’t ’cause they’re too junior. You?”
He thought about it and knew deep down that she was right. “Yeah—that’s why they let me ask that line of questioning and gave me straight answers. They’ve told us we’re among the elect, and if we aren’t a good little boy and girl, they can just tell Seventeen to consider us peons. I think they’ve got us cold now.”
“Well, what else do they need?”
“I don’t know,” he responded worriedly, “but just consider the full implications of all this. They could just as easily decide to run us through one of their little programs.”
When the summons came, it was from an unexpected source.
They had been told of the Special Projects Unit, and had even seen and socialized with some of the members of that group. Along with Landscape Engineering and Main Computer Systems, they were the other group with unlimited and unrestricted access to Seventeen. They had priority, but they had never abused it, and they worked out of their own offices with good security up top, almost inside the central mast. Many of them were computer experts, and some were former Kagan employees who had worked on the 7800 developmental project. They had made themselves available and invaluable to the other two departments, and there was certainly no feeling or suspicion that they had anything to do with Security other than have the girls and boys in red guard their offices.
Thus, it was with great surprise that both Toby and Connie received requests to meet with Special Projects in the top offices early the next morning. It wasn’t totally convenient, and both felt some suspicion that it had something to do with the computer flags, but there was no question that they would go. Security was expecting them, and passed them right along to a large and comfortable but still unfinished head office.
Two people rose to greet them. One was a dark, handsome, bearded Sikh in the red uniform of Security and a crimson turban. He wore colonel’s insignia, which made him very high up indeed in the Security hierarchy. The other was a woman who sat behind a large and somewhat cluttered desk. She was small, almost delicately pretty, with strong Japanese features and long silky black hair. She was relaxed and casually dressed and looked far too young to be “Patricia Suzuki, M.D.” as it said on the nameplate on the desk.
“Please come in and sit down,” the woman behind the desk said, rising and gesturing to two comfortable-looking chairs angled to face her from her left while the Sikh sat similarly on her right. “I’m Patty Suzuki, and this is Colonel Singh.” The two engineers nodded and took their seats. They could take Dr. Suzuki, but the red-clad colonel was something else. “I assume you both know why you’re here.”
“I think so,” Haller replied. “I’m not sure it’s necessary though.”
“I think it is,” the woman in charge responsed. “We’re at a crossroads with the two of you that we anticipated, since we’ve been at this crossroads many times before with all sections dealing directly with the Kagan series. It’s quite natural for you to pursue the line you did and to wonder about it. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be good scientists, and if you weren’t somewhat concerned by the ethical implications of it, you wouldn’t be the kind of people to hold responsible positions. We already have landscaping personnel working with us. That’s what this project is really all about. Exploring the full implications of the digitizing and programming process on human beings, not things. We must know just what we really have here, not merely for the sake of science but for the sake of security, but this sort of thing must be kept quite confidential. I’m sure you can see why.”
They both nodded. “It didn’t take a lot of imagination to think of what the news simply of—what? Resurrection? Eternal youth?—might have on the general population. We’d either choke in people in just a few generations or we’d have massive riots and wind up with a police state, hated by the masses.”
“Exactly.” Suzuki seemed very pleased at the answers. “It’s a pretty cold thing to have to do, but it has to be done. I’m a psychiatrist, by the way. I began work with this team back at Site K, the orbiting lab and station, when we first saw the implications of our research. When we got our first 7800 and saw how much more we could do with it than with the 7240—and the 7240 is awesome in its own right—we knew we had to continue to work here or someone else would without authority, direction, or the benefits of our previous work. That’s what we’re doing here.”
Both of the engineers nodded, understanding the whole line. Both were fascinated in spite of the potential.
“I suspected as much, but I didn’t expect to be privy to so much detail,” Toby Haller told her. “I get the strong impression that this is leading somewhere.”
Pandit Singh spoke for the first time. “Dr. Haller. Dr. Makapuua, I am not merely the guardian of this knowledge and this project. My business is paranoia in the same way as Dr. Suzuki deals in it, but mine is a different direction. She is paid to cure it: I am paid to be paranoid, to think that way all the time. To keep things secure and safe. I must be a paranoid, but also I am paranoid over what it is I am safeguarding. I will, for example, never fully trust you with this information. We will keep an eye on both of you, and if it gets out due to your actions, intentional or not. I will trace it back to you and you will pay dearly for it. This I think you know without my going into detail.” It was said so casually, so matter-of-factly, that it was far more chilling than it otherwise would have been.
“The fact is.” Suzuki put in, trying to get things back to a friendly basis, “we need more help than we have. We very much need the aid and support of top personnel like yourselves who are in daily contact with the computer and use it in its most elaborate fashion. Primarily, we need you as extra eyes and ears. To fully understand the colonel’s fear of what he is guarding, you’ll have to see it for yourself. Come. Let’s take a walk.”
They went out of the big office and down a still unfinished hallway, through two more security checkpoints, and finally reached a secure lab one floor below that was set up very much like their own experimental lab on the second floor. The difference was that here a grid had been run across a rectangular floor which was otherwise barren, and the computer interfaces were in a sealed booth in front of it. Also, suspended from the ceiling in a number of places were automatic guns controlled from Security’s main outpost just off the main level. Two computer technicians staffed the Overrider and Guard positions, one a quite beautiful young woman in lab whites, the other a bearded man in Security reds.