canned information is available from the Unistat Administrator. This unit has been instructed to isolate the cerebromorph immediately, using the quarantine procedure for handling contaminated material. Our resident stands condemmed of serious crimes.”
Gregor has his instrument case in his hands. “Let’s hear him out,” he says. “We listened long enough to the machine. I’ll disconnect the communicator from the wreck.”
The work takes only a few minutes, for the communicator is not an integral part of the Amco-pak’s mechanical system and is easily removed. Gregor immediately begins attaching the insulated neurofibril wire to hookups on the cranial container, expertly making a hundred difficult connections in a third of the time a maintenance van takes for the same job. “Last one… .” He tweezers the final cable into place with his microgrip wrench. A thin squeal issues from concealed speakers.
“A little more volume, Gregor?” Swann asks.
He adjusts the exterior control and the tiny piercing sound builds into a scream so agonized and unvarying, so explicitly the voice of utter terror and desolation, that it seems to echo from the very chambers of hell itself. The removal of deposit-drawer number A-0001-M(637-05-99) occasions very little real sorrow in the subdistrict. Every twentieth-century resident (more than seven-tenths of Level I) knows the story of Skeets Kalbfleischer, but they feel no loss at his passing. He is only a casualty, overlooked in the excitement, a bit-player in the drama of the recent emergency. Those who were not underground in Depositories during the Thirty-minute War remember the brotherhood of survival. A similar emotion unites the subdistrict; everyone together, enduring the same hardships, at the mercy of a single peril. To the residents who’d lived through the war, the news of the destruction of the world’s first cerebromorph seems as trivial as the wartime report that a stray Israeli missile leveled the pyramid of Cheops.
One twentieth-century native is concerned by the accident. The loss of Skeets Kalbfleischer’s brain is a problem for Auditor Philip Quarrels. No resident of Level I has ever been Elevated and Center Control had hoped Skeets would be the first. A big job. The onus is with the Auditor in charge. Success brings its own reward. Failure is unthinkable.
Although Quarrels is aware that this emergency period is bound to complicate matters, he nevertheless files a requisition with the Medical Authority for a mature adult brain. If none is available, perhaps the hatchery can be asked to grow one on special order.
Skeets Kalbfleischer is only organically dead. His brain has been destroyed, but his memory lingers on. His every thought and experience, even the unknown depths of his subconscious, are recorded on micro-encephalogram files. His dreams are preserved on old auditing reports. Spiritually, Skeets Kalbfleischer is very much alive; he is on file. When a new brain is available, Philip Quarrels will supervise the playback procedures. He doesn’t mind if he has to wait. He’s got all the time in the world.
In a distant sector on Level II, another Auditor confronts his problems. No direct communication channels have opened up to the Surface Installation and the Sentinel’s signal must be monitored by the Unistat Administrator. Then a file is delivered to the Dispatch Division and rebroadcast. There is a frustrating ten-minute time lapse; Obu Itubi’s Auditor is able to watch only the past. Any command takes another ten minutes to reach the Sentinel. He is powerless. But the Auditor knows his impotence is temporary. His quarry has only a twenty-minute lead.
Still, the behavior of the Nords is so erratic, so utterly haphazard, that the Auditor is forced to acknowledge the irritating symptoms of anxiety as he watches them carry the cranial container away from the dome. At the far end of the clearing, three Amco-paks are piling brush and deadfalls. Another
Gregor has his instrument case in his hands. “Let’s hear him out,” he says. “We listened long enough to the machine. I’ll disconnect the communicator from the wreck.”
The work takes only a few minutes, for the communicator is not an integral part of the Amco-pak’s mechanical system and is easily removed. Gregor immediately begins attaching the insulated neurofibril wire to hookups on the cranial container, expertly making a hundred difficult connections in a third of the time a maintenance van takes for the same job. “Last one… .” He tweezers the final cable into place with his microgrip wrench. A thin squeal issues from concealed speakers.
“A little more volume, Gregor?” Swann asks.
He adjusts the exterior control and the tiny piercing sound builds into a scream so agonized and unvarying, so explicitly the voice of utter terror and desolation, that it seems to echo from the very chambers of hell itself. The removal of deposit-drawer number A-0001-M(637-05-99) occasions very little real sorrow in the subdistrict. Every twentieth-century resident (more than seven-tenths of Level I) knows the story of Skeets Kalbfleischer, but they feel no loss at his passing. He is only a casualty, overlooked in the excitement, a bit-player in the drama of the recent emergency. Those who were not underground in Depositories during the Thirty-minute War remember the brotherhood of survival. A similar emotion unites the subdistrict; everyone together, enduring the same hardships, at the mercy of a single peril. To the residents who’d lived through the war, the news of the destruction of the world’s first cerebromorph seems as trivial as the wartime report that a stray Israeli missile leveled the pyramid of Cheops.
One twentieth-century native is concerned by the accident. The loss of Skeets Kalbfleischer’s brain is a problem for Auditor Philip Quarrels. No resident of Level I has ever been Elevated and Center Control had hoped Skeets would be the first. A big job. The onus is with the Auditor in charge. Success brings its own reward. Failure is unthinkable.
Although Quarrels is aware that this emergency period is bound to complicate matters, he nevertheless files a requisition with the Medical Authority for a mature adult brain. If none is available, perhaps the hatchery can be asked to grow one on special order.
Skeets Kalbfleischer is only organically dead. His brain has been destroyed, but his memory lingers on. His every thought and experience, even the unknown depths of his subconscious, are recorded on micro-encephalogram files. His dreams are preserved on old auditing reports. Spiritually, Skeets Kalbfleischer is very much alive; he is on file. When a new brain is available, Philip Quarrels will supervise the playback procedures. He doesn’t mind if he has to wait. He’s got all the time in the world.
In a distant sector on Level II, another Auditor confronts his problems. No direct communication channels have opened up to the Surface Installation and the Sentinel’s signal must be monitored by the Unistat Administrator. Then a file is delivered to the Dispatch Division and rebroadcast. There is a frustrating ten-minute time lapse; Obu Itubi’s Auditor is able to watch only the past. Any command takes another ten minutes to reach the Sentinel. He is powerless. But the Auditor knows his impotence is temporary. His quarry has only a twenty-minute lead.
Still, the behavior of the Nords is so erratic, so utterly haphazard, that the Auditor is forced to acknowledge the irritating symptoms of anxiety as he watches them carry the cranial container away from the dome. At the far end of the clearing, three Amco-paks are piling brush and deadfalls. Another
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