“You know the system of justice for Populations,” the colonel said. “Each cultural group judges its own if it’s within that group. If it’s cross-cultural, the company supplies a judge, and jurors are chosen equally by the offending groups.” He paused, leaned over, and said into a speaker, “Bring in the prisoner.”
A door opened to one side of the rectangular grid, and Security troops brought in a big Semitic-looking man with a full beard, long hair, and blazing eyes. His hands and feet were manacled, and he had trouble walking. They took him to the center, where restraints were built into the floor, and chained him there, removing the rest. He was stark naked.
“This is Hasim Kashakamani,” Colonel Singh told them. “Hasim is a Suni Moslem whose family has been feuding, back and forth, with Shi’ite families over a parched piece of arid nothing for a couple of centuries now. He is the eldest survivor of five sons, and took it upon himself back home to keep up the family-retribution business. His family does in fact have wealth and good connections by marriage, so when he was apprehended in the act of attempted murder, they managed to get him assigned to Populations here instead of the usual messy trial and punishment. It was agreed to by both sides that it would be a good idea, since permanent exile to a new life would remove him as a martyr to his brothers and thus this might end the feuding back home. He agreed, and has been a model colonist up to now. He’s quite bright, and had been in line to supervise one of the first farm collectives you are to create.”
Connie just stared at him. Toby said, “I gather he wasn’t a good model after all.”
“To say the least. We solved seven open rape cases, all of Shi’ite women, when we caught him in the act. I’d like to say we suspected all along, but it was a matter of luck. Dr. Suzuki’s staff looked at him and ultimately determined that he was incorrigible, that he was so filled with hatred and violence, he kept seeing his enemies in every Shi’ite he met, and this was the result—a generalized action that struck at random, causing pain, anguish, and fear throughout the still small Shi’ite community, male as well as female. He was tried by a combined court and unanimously sentenced to death. As in all capital cases since we’ve set up this project, we have provided a matrixed dead body for the victims to see and brought the prisoner here. It is the only moral and ethical way to get human subjects.”
They stared at the fierce-looking man, who seemed to be staring back defiantly.
“The easiest way to configure a program of this nature is to go for the basics.” Suzuki added. “What we have represented here is violence, a high aggressive level, hatred, and delusions of grandeur. He really believes God commanded his acts. He believes God will save him now. With such an extreme and complex case, a cure, if possible, would take years, perhaps decades, even with our best drugs and therapists. We could break him, but it would reduce him to a vegetable, useless in our colony. The trick, then, is to save the talents and intelligence we have while removing everything else.” She turned to the white-clad woman. “Run digitizing routine.”
Both the woman and the security man at Guard said nothing, but both Toby and Connie knew that they were in full contact with the computer—Seventeen itself, in fact—and calling up routines and programs that were off limits to any but those at this console.
Still, Connie was surprised. “With those shackles on? No tube or gas preparation?”
“Not necessary here.” Suzuki replied. “The 7800 interface system is quite direct, needing no more prep for humans than for bricks or trees or streetlights.”
There was a crackling sound below, like a large electrical short, and the big man was gone. The manacles, excluded from the routine, dropped to the floor with a clang, as did a ring he had been wearing. It was simple to do—a command to ignore all inorganic material not encased in the body.
“I have a strong sense of justice,” Pandit Singh told them, “but not without some mercy. Suggestions have been made to the computer, and a routine run on the matrix it already had from arrival which is now being updated and adjusted. As soon as my people clear away the bonds and other debris down there, we’ll reconstruct our Hasim. Ah! Now—watch!”
The status board lights went from yellow to green again, and there was another crackle, a noise associated as much with displaced air as it was with the energy-matter transformation itself. Now a human stood there once more, looking around, slightly confused. It was, in fact, a young girl’s form, perhaps no more than sixteen, with dark Mediterranean features, big, innocent, soulful eyes, long black hair, looking soft, delicate, and curvaceous.
“Who is she?” Connie almost whispered.
With that beauty and those knockers, Toby thought, I might get easily turned on here.
“That,” replied Suzuki, “is Hasim.”
Haller coughed and Connie gave a surprised, quiet gasp.
“Come,” said the colonel. “My people will find her some appropriate clothing and we’ll talk to her.”
The interview was short and basic; they would still have to help her with some psychological conditioning and adjustment. Still, it was dramatic enough. She sat there, looking slightly dazed, in an ill-fitting pullover dress.
“What is your name, child?” Suzuki asked gently.
The girl looked blank. “I—I am afraid I do not know. I am trying to think, but I do not remember much of anything about myself.” The voice was soft and gentle and even a bit sweet, a child’s sort of voice.
“That’s all right. I’m a doctor and we’ll help you with that later. Can you tell us anything at all about yourself?”
She thought a moment. “I—I am a girl.” She said it almost as if she had just realized it herself.
“Good. What else?”
She thought for a moment. “I am a Moslem but without family and unwed.” That was said a bit nervously. Conservative Moslem girls were kept pretty well protected by their families until an arranged marriage and a dowry of some kind was paid.
“Can you read and write?”
“No, madam. But I can draw and I can manage animals. I know much about the care and feeding of cows and horses.”
“All Islam worships the same God and reveres the same Prophet,” the colonel noted, “but there are differences in traditions between the peoples of the Prophet. Of which tradition are you?”
She stared at him a moment. “I am Suni,” she told him.
“Thank you, child,” Suzuki told her gently. “Now, go with these nice people and they will get you started and tell you more about yourself.”
After the girl had left, Toby turned to the psychiatrist. “Hasim—could he read and write?”
“Oh, yes. In three languages. It’ll be easier for us to place her in the community with a level of ignorance disguising her intelligence though. She’s not going to be supervisory material, after all. She’ll make someone a good wife and bear many beautiful children, and she’ll be quite an asset on the farm, retaining as she does almost instinctually Hasim’s fairly extensive gifts with animals and knowledge of animal husbandry.”
They went back to Suzuki’s office, more unnerved than stunned by it all, and while they took the offered coffee, Haller, at least, felt like he needed a few stiff jolts.
“Her aggression level has been dampened to a major extent, and her sexual appetite is rather high,” the psychiatrist told them. “She’s still smart, but she’ll need protection, and I fear she’ll know the fear of potential rape.”
“It hardly seems fair,” Connie protested. “I don’t care if it is the rejumbled atoms of Hasim, that girl had nothing to do with raping those women. It’s a totally different person.”
“Only in a sense. If you like, I’ll explain the procedure.”
“By all means,” Haller said.
“We want you to understand it,” Singh put in. “because it goes to the heart of the problem. You saw the totality of the change, and I can assure you that it is as permanent as your roads and trees and grass out there. It was done by the computer. True, we put in all the information, all the medical, biophysical, and biochemical information it would need, and the psychiatric profiles as well. Still, the 7800 actually did it, and it did a bit more, interpolating through the holes as best it could. It’s getting quite a bit more efficient at creating whole human beings, I fear.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Dr. Haller, I have been digitized and rebuilt many times by the 7800’s. So have you and the ladies here. We will be some more, because it is convenient and it saves time. Out beyond the basic Anchor stabilization program, a grid very much like that one covers the whole of the world between Anchors and Gates, and the 7800’s have a networked access to it. I can only pray I am the same person at both ends of the transmission, for I would never know it. Out there in the Flux environment, I am continually at the computer’s mercy. It is getting far too good at this. We need to know if it still needs us to do it.”