Did they give their sophotect in Overburg a name and their affection?
Kenmuir stirred. “I’ll be on my way, then,” he said.
The officer raised a humanlike hand. “A moment, por favor. I would like to caution you. This is a difficult society. The conflict between chiefs has not improved matters. Have a care, always. Especially after your friend arrives. You’ve indicated she’s female. I get the impression she’s attractive. Best she’ stay inconspicuous, and no longer than she must. Do you follow me?”
“I … think so,” Kenmuir answered.
Mostly he was thinking how well the machine had read him. But why shouldn’t it? If the glands weren’t there, an equivalent was, conation, intuition, together with an intellect probably superior to his.
Certainly superior, if you understood that this was an avatar of the cybercosm,’merging itself again and again with the whole, sometimes reshaped thereby, always bearing back memories of that gigantic oneness, even an intimation of the Teramind. Of course it interpreted his overtones, body language, things left unsaid: and not without what you might as well call empathy, or actual sympathy. It, Auld Angus, every electrophotonic intelligence—and, yes, the humble unconscious robots—were all waves on the same ocean.
The optics gleamed. How much did they note of his face and body? How much about him would the mind enter in the database, when next it reported what it observed?
For him to wear a life mask would have been an exercise in futility, as untrained as he was in it. Worse, it would have singled him out. After that, a quick check of somatic data that were surely on file would give cause to arrest him.
His hope lay in remaining utterly undistinguished. In the sheer immensity of the databases was refuge— for a while. No matter how carefully designed a search tree was, scanning, retrieval, and evaluation took finite time. Until the hunters got a clear idea of what to seek for, their machines could spend days, weeks, among the permutations of two billion humans. Not that that would happen. Too much of the system was needed to keep civilization running.
Give this kindly being no reason to want more information about him.
“Yes. Thank you. But, uh, you mean—”
“A mayor in Bramland may command any woman to join him for as long as he chooses. It’s the custom; they seldom object. In fact, it’s considered an honor.” Those who did object could, theoretically, catch the next airbus out of town. Theoretically. Therefore theauthorities ignored the whole business. “Ordinarily, a visitor would not be bothered. Our current mayor, though—Perhaps you’d like to meet your friend somewhere else.”
Kenmuir considered. Another move could by itself draw attention, the more so if Bruno took offense and started phoning around about it. “No, thank you again, but I expect we’ll be all right. He won’t want charges filed against him, will he? Chances are, anyway, he’ll never see her.” He rose. “Good day, Officer.”
“A good day to you,” said the sophotect.
Jeb waited outside. Doggedly, he guided Kenmuir to the inn. Regardless, the heart rose within the spaceman. He’d made it this far. Weren’t he and Aleka exaggerating their danger? What lay ahead could prove fairly straightforward, until—excitement thrummed—it brought them to whatever had been discovered and done, long ago on Luna. T
From its height Temerir’s observatory looked widely over the crater wilderness that is most of Farside. A low sun filled the land with intricate shadows and dun highlights. He had set the viewscreen in his living room to show that scene, not as the eye would have beheld it but with glare stopped down and lesser radiances enhanced. There the solar disc glowed soft between zodiacal wings and stars were like fire-drops flung off the tumbling Milky Way. Otherwise the room was sparsely furnished, as austere as its owner. An abstract lava sculpture on a table resembled a thick twist of smoke. The air, a little chilly, bore a tinge of ozone and subdued music on no scale ever heard on Earth. When Dagny noticed it, she thought of ghosts in flight before the wind. Temerir had not said where his one wife and their children were. He alone received his guests, Brandir, Kaino, Fia, and his mother. Crystal glasses and a decanter of wine were his scanty concession to custom. Nobody cared or poured. They entered and stood unspeaking for perhaps a minute. Nor had any among them talked much on their way here in Brandir’s yacht; but then crew had been present.